GIFT   OF 
JANE  KoSATHER 


A  VANISHING  FIGURE 

A  ' '  Gaucho  "  in  full  costume,  wearing  the  "  chiripa,"  or  loose  over-trousers, 


and  carrying  the  "  bolas  "  around  his  waist. 


Frontispiece. ,] 


THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Notes  and  Impressions  of  a  Year 
in    the  Argentine  and  Uruguay 

By 

J.   A.   HAMMERTON 
ii 

With  Numerous  Illustrations 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
1915 


11  fit 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 


.' 

--t 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I  PAGE 

FROM  LONDON  TO  LISBON i 

CHAPTER  II 
OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE 7 

CHAPTER  III 
FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES 28 

CHAPTER  IV 
PICTURES  OF  STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES 38 

CHAPTER  V 

MORE  SCENES  FROM  THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES      ....     56 

CHAPTER  VI 

WHAT  WE  THOUGHT  OF  THE  WEATHER  AND  THE  MOSQUITOS  .     .     73 

CHAPTER  VII 
A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM 83 

CHAPTER  VIII 
SOME  "PASEOS"  IN  BUENOS  AYRES 102 

CHAPTER  IX 
MORE  "PASEOS"  IN  BUENOS  AYRES 116 

CHAPTER  X 
How  THE  MONEY  GOES 129 

CHAPTER  XI 
SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE 154 

CHAPTER  XII 
BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES 195 

CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME 236 


331101 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XIV  PAGE 

"THE  BRITISH  COLONY"  AND  ITS  WAYS 260 

CHAPTER  XV 
THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE 289 

CHAPTER  XVI 
LIFE  IN  THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  THE  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS 315 

CHAPTER  XVII 
THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  COUNTRY 340 

CHAPTER  XVIII 
A  LAND  OF  PAIN 348 

CHAPTER  XIX 
TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  THE  ARGENTINE 361 

CHAPTER  XX 
OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO 379     v 

CHAPTER  XXI 
URUGUAY:    NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS 41  x 

CHAPTER  XXII 
FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES 438 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  Vanishing  Figure  — "  Gaucho  "  in  full  costume  Frontispiece 


PAGE 


One  of  the  Crowded  Docks  in  the  Port  of  Buenos  Ayres  .  4 
Friends  of  Emigrants  Awaiting  Arrival  of  a  Ship  ...  4 
Paseo  Colon,  with  Government  House  on  the  Right  .  .  12 
The  Narrow  Streets  of  Buenos  Ayres  —  Florida  and  San 

Martin 22 

The  Changing  Heart  of  Buenos  Ayres  —  Plaza  de  Mayo  34 
Exterior  and  Interior  of  the  "  Casa  Rosada  "  .  .  .  .44 

Statue  of  San  Martin  in  Buenos  Ayres 52 

The  Colon  Theatre,  Buenos  Ayres 60 

Exterior  of  the  Jockey  Club,  Buenos  Ayres      ....     68 

The  New  Courts  of  Justice 76 

The  Palatial  Home  of  La  Prensa,  Buenos  Ayres  ...  88 
A  Princely  Sanctum  Room  of  the  Prensa  s  Chief  Editor  .  96 
A  Corner  of  the  Medical  Consulting  Room  of  the  Prensa  96 
Bedroom  of  Distinguished  Visitors'  Suite  in  Prensa  Office  106 
The  Gorgeously  Decorated  Salon  in  the  Prensa  Office  .  106 
A  Contrast  in  Public  Buildings  —  Art  Gallery  and  Water- 
works Office H2 

English  "Pro-Cathedral"  in  Buenos  Ayres      .      .      .      .118 

Roman  Catholic  Cathedral,  Buenos  Ayres 118 

"  La  Merced,"  a  Typical  Buenos  Ayres  Church     .      .      .124 

"  Teatro  de  la  Opera,"  Exterior  View 124 

The  Luxurious  Domestic  Architecture  of  Buenos  Ayres  .  136 
Terminus  of  the  Southern  Railway  at  Plaza  Constitu- 

cion,  Buenos  Ayres 148 

Marble  Fountain   in   the   Gardens  of   the   Paseo   Colon, 

Buenos  Ayres 158 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


Plaza  Francia,  in  the  Avenida  Alvear,  Buenos  Ayres   .      .158 
Prize  Bulls  at  Buenos  Ayres  Agricultural  Show     .      .      .    1 66 

Summer  Scenes  on  the  Tigre 174 

Views  of  Mar  del  Plata 182 

Suburban  and  Rural  Roads  in  the  Argentine  .  .  .  .190 
An  Argentine  "  Gaucho  "  in  his  Hours  of  Ease  .  .  .198 
Italian  "  Colonos  "  and  their  "  Rancho  "  in  the  Argentine  206 
A  Village  Wheelwright  in  the  Argentine  "  Camp  "  .  .  206 
Preparing  the  Picnic  Meal  — "  Un  Asada  "  in  the  Argen- 
tine   214 

Fields  of  Maize 222 

Bags  of  Wheat  Awaiting  Shipment 230 

Three  Huge  Piles  of  "  Jerked  Beef  "  at  a  "  Saladero  "  .  230 
A  Scene  in  the  "  Camp  " — Peones  Outside  a  "  Pulperia," 

or  Country  Grocery  and  Liquor  Store      ....   240 
A   "  Ramada,"   or   Shaded   Resting-Place   for   Men    and 

Horses 254 

An  "  Estancia  "  Homestead  of  the  Old  Clay-Built  Type  .  266 
A  Modern  "  Estancia  "  Homestead  Built  of  Concrete  .  282 
A  "  Rodeo,"  or  Round-Up  of  Cattle  in  the  Argentine 

Pampa 294 

Familiar  Scenes  on  an  "Estancia" 310 

Teams  of  Oxen  Ploughing  in  the  Argentine  Pampa  .  .318 
Montevideo  from  the  South,  Showing  the  Cerro  with  Its 

Fort 332 

Shipping  in  the  Roadstead  at  Montevideo 332 

General  View  of  Montevideo  and  the  River  Plate      .      .   344 

Plaza  Independencia,  Montevideo    . 350 

Plaza  Libertad,  or  Cagancha,  Montevideo       .      .      .      .350 

Cathedral  and  Plaza  Matriz,  Montevideo 356 

Plaza  Independencia  and  Avenida   18  de  Julio,  Monte- 
video         356 

The  "  Rambla  "  at  Pocitos,  Montevideo 364 

Bathing  Place  at  Ramirez,  Montevideo 364 

Main  Buildings  of  Montevideo  University      ....     372 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

The  Solis  Theatre,  Montevideo 372 

Scene  in  the  Parque  Urbano  of  Montevideo     ....   382 
A  Rural  Glimpse  in  the  Prado,  Montevideo      .      .      .      .382 
Cattle  Assembled  on  "  La  Tablada,"  Near  Montevideo  .   390 
Types  of  the  Fantastic  Domestic  Architecture  of  Monte- 
video         408 

Typical  Country  Road  in  Uruguay 418 

Hides  Drying  at  a  Curing  Factory  Near  Montevideo  .      .418 

The  Calle  San  Martin,  Mendoza 432 

A  Glimpse  of  the  River  Mendoza 432 

The  Natural  Bridge  of  Puente  del  Inca 440 

The  Inca's  Lake  in  the  Andes 446 

The  Christ  of  the  Andes 446 


•'-••'•' 


INTRODUCTION 

So  many  books  have  been  written  on  South  Ameri- 
can countries  within  recent  years  that  the  addition  of 
one  more  to  the  already  formidable  list  calls  for  a 
word  of  explanation,  if  not  apology. 

So  far  as  American  writers  on  the  Latin-American 
Republics  are  concerned,  many  of  their  works  are  based 
upon  the  statistical  returns  of  the  respective  Govern- 
ments, or  on  topographical  and  historical  data,  easily 
obtainable  at  the  public  libraries.  Others,  more  pop- 
ular, but  perhaps  less  valuable,  are  the  hasty  records 
of  fleeting  visits.  These  latter  are  so  apt  to  be  in- 
formed by  a  spirit  of  indiscriminate  admiration  that 
they  present  misleading  and  untrue  notions  of  the  coun- 
tries described. 

The  present  writer  may  be  stating  what  is  already 
known  to  the  reader,  when  he  mentions  that  among 
both  of  these  classes  of  books  a  considerable  percentage 
—  perhaps  the  greater  number  of  those  published  in 
the  United  States  and  in  England  —  have  been  subsi- 
dised by  the  governments  of  the  respective  republics  of 
which  they  treat.  Many  are  but  glorified  advertising 
pamphlets,  put  forth  in  the  guise  of  serious  books  the 
better  to  fulfil  their  office  of  propaganda.  To  look  to 
them  for  any  dispassionate  and  well-studied  view  of  the 
countries  illustrated  in  their  pages,  would  be  as  natural 
as  to  expect  the  advertisement  writer  of  Somebody's 
Soap  to  publish  an  entirely  impartial  opinion  of  the 
article  he  had  been  employed  to  advertise. 


INTRODUCTION 

Several  French  and  German  authors  have  written 
admirable  works  on  the  Argentine,  entirely  free  from 
bias,  depicting  the  country  as  it  is,  alive  to  its  merits 
and  its  demerits  »alike;  free  both  from  the  charge  of 
"  log-rolling "  and  from  that  of  hasty  observation. 
But  American  or  English  writers  of  similar  works  are 
not  many.  Nay,  due  to  the  difficulties  of  ensuring  the 
conditions  essential  to  the  impartial  and  open-minded 
study  of  the  country,  even  writers  of  such  international 
distinction  as  Viscount  Bryce  and  Mr.  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  with  the  best  will  in  the  world,  are  liable 
to  give  false  impressions.  Often  have  I  seen  the  sys- 
tem at  work,  whereby  "  distinguished  visitors "  to 
South  American  capitals  are  so  entirely  taken  in  hand 
by  Government,  entertained  royally,  and  shown  only 
such  things  as  Government  particularly  wish  them  to 
see,  that  it  would  be  expecting  too  much  of  human  na- 
ture to  look  to  them  for  an  unbiased  opinion  of  the 
country.  I  have  not  read  Lord  Bryce's  book  on  South 
America,  nor  anything  that  Mr.  Roosevelt  may  have 
written  concerning  his  tour  there,  but  both  these  emi- 
nent men  so  suffer  from  the  disability  of  their  emi- 
nence, and  from  the  official  hospitality  showered  upon 
them  during  their  brief  sojourns  in  South  America, 
that,  try  they  never  so  valiantly  to  speak  nothing  but 
the  truth, —  and  I  esteem  them,  different  as  they  are  in 
many  ways,  two  of  the  frankest  and  most  honourable 
of  modern  statesmen, —  their  impressions  will  be  col- 
oured by  the  peculiar  conditions  under  which  they  were 
obtained;  conditions  of  official  tutelage;  and  tempered 
furthermore  by  reason  of  the  warm  hospitality  ex- 
tended to  them  by  the  respective  Governments.  As 


INTRODUCTION 

for  the  things  they  see  in  their  rounds  of  inspection,  it 
is  notorious  that  they  are  shown  only  what  official  dis- 
cretion would  have  them  see.  All  this,  mark  you,  in 
no  depreciation  of  the  brilliant  work  which  these,  and 
many  less  distinguished  visitors  to  South  America,  are 
capable  of  doing,  but  merely  to  remind  the  reader  that 
the  conditions  in  which  a  work  descriptive  of  any  par- 
ticular country  has  been  evolved  ought  to  be  borne  in 
mind  in  the  reading  of  it. 

The  chief  fault  of  most  writers  on  the  Argentine 
is  the  indiscriminate  praise  they  shower  around;  their 
fulsome  flattery  of  the  country.  Only  two  hours  ago 
I  received  from  Canada  a  newspaper  with  most  of  its 
front  page  devoted  to  an  illustrated  article  entitled 
"  Buenos  Ayres  —  the  Paris  of  the  New  World."  An 
estate  agent,  describing  the  attractions  of  some  prop- 
erty for  sale,  would  have  been  beggared  for  superla- 
tives compared  with  the  writer  of  this  article  who  lets 
loose  a  veritable  flood  of  uncritical  "  gush  "  on  Buenos 
Ayres.  He  may  have  spent  a  week  in  the  town,  or  he 
may  never  have  seen  it,  but  a  more  untruthful  or  mis- 
leading account  of  the  city  could  not  have  been  penned, 
though  it  is  typical  of  many  that  have  come  to  my  no- 
tice. I  feel  that  the  influence  of  such  writings  is  to 
create  in  the  minds  of  xthe  public  who  do  not  know  the 
scenes  nor  the  conditions  described  an  impression  en- 
tirely mischievous. 

So  thinking,  I  have  set  myself  in  the  present  work  to 
make  "  a  try  at  truth."  I  have  lived  long  enough  on 
the  River  Plate  to  revise  and  correct  my  impressions. 
I  mastered  the  language  of  the  country,  so  that  I  came 
to  converse  in  it  as  readily  as  in  English.  And  during 


INTRODUCTION 

the  whole  of  my  stay  I  wrote  not  a  single  paragraph  of 
this  book,  lest  I  should  record  impressions  and  ideas 
which  in  the  end  might  be  misleading.  I  deliberately 
refrained  from  note-taking,  so  that  when,  fully  a  year 
later,  I  came  to  the  writing,  I  should  be  able  to  secure 
a  truer  perspective,  only  the  things  that  mattered  dis- 
engaging themselves  from  the  multitude  of  impres- 
sions that  crowd  in  on  one  during  a  year  of  active  life 
in  a  strange  land. 

I  have  eschewed  statistics,  which  bulk  so  largely  in 
most  other  works  on  the  Argentine,  and  can  be  made  to 
prove  whatever  a  writer  most  wishes  to  establish. 
What  I  have  sought  for  rather,  has  been  the  humanln- 
terest  of  these  great  cities  of  the  River  Plate;  to  pre- 
"sent  an  honest  picture  of  the  life  that  is  being  lived  in 
them  to-day,  and  to  convey,  in  as  interesting  a  manner 
as  I  know  how,  some  general  notion  of  the  Republics 
of  Argentine  and  Uruguay  as  they  really  are.  I  care- 
fully avoid  the  official  point  of  view,  having  studiously 
refrained  from  putting  myself  at  any  time  under  any 
obligation  that  might  tend  to  make  me  echo  an  official 
opinion  instead  of  stating  that  which  I  had  honestly 
formed  from  personal  and  independent  study. 

J.  A.  H. 


THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 


CHAPTER  I 

FROM    LONDON   TO    LISBON 

WE  set  out  from  London  on  a  raw  and  rainy  day.  It 
had  been  raining  off  and  on  for  many  weeks,  and  as 
enthusiasts  of  the  car  we  had  been  grumbling,  my  wife 
and  I,  a  good  deal  at  the  weather.  But  we  were 
booked  for  the  land  of  sunshine !  And  when  we  bade 
good-bye  to  the  chauffeur  at  Charing  Cross  Station, 
rather  nervously  watched  the  old  grey  car  roll  away 
among  the  traffic  and  the  drizzling  rain,  we  comforted 
each  other  with  simple  words  about  the  sunshine  that 
awaited  us  far  off  by  the  River  Plate. 

Even  Paris  was  dirty.  I  am  an  inveterate  lover  of 
Paris,  and  must  have  made  some  thirty  different  visits, 
but  seldom  out  of  season,  so  that  I  have  rarely  seen 
her  draggle-tailed.  But  in  that  rainy  March  she 
looked  as  miserable  -as  London,  and  next  day  only  the 
luxurious  accommodation  of  the  Sud  Express  made  the 
journey  through  a  sodden  France  agreeable.  Floods 
everywhere.  In  the  neighbourhood  of  Orleans,  the 
geography  of  the  country  seemed  to  have  changed,  and 
this  land  of  few  lakes  was  studded  with  sheets  of  water 
that  more  than  rivalled  those  of  Bouchet,  or  Gerard- 
mer. 

Entering  Spain  we  suffered  a  change  in  railway  ac- 
commodation which  was  to  be  typical  of  many  things 
when  changed  into  Spanish  —  a  change  for  the  worse. 
The  carriages  were  no  longer  so  princely  in  their  ap- 


2  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

pointments,  they  were  smaller  and  not  quite  so  clean; 
but  we  were  still  on  the  Sud  Express,  the  train  de  luxe, 
and  were  .(but  guessed  it  not)  more  comfortable  than 
we  were  to  be  again  for  many  moons.  So  in  the 
darkness  through  Northern  Spain,  awakening  in  the 
morning  as  we  were  nearing  the  borders  of  Portugal. 

Thus  far  the  journey  had  mostly  covered  ground 
long  familiar  to  me,  but  Portugal  was  a  new  land,  and 
romantically  beautiful  it  appeared,  with  its  stony  up- 
lands, its  green  mountains  and  leafy  valleys,  seen  in 
the  clear  rain-wasrhed  air  of  that  golden  day  that  fol- 
lowed the  passing  of  the  floods.  We  were  due  in 
Lisbon  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night;  but,  a  bridge  on  the 
route  having  been  washed  away,  the  train  had  to  make 
a  long  detour.  We  arrived  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing; yet  the  town  was  as  wide  awake  as  if  it  had  been 
no  later  than  ten.  It  evidently  goes  to  bed  about  three, 
as  we  soon  found  to  our  cost  when  we  sought  to  sleep 
in  one  of  the  luxurious  chambers  of  the  Avenida  Palace 
Hotel.  And  here  again  we  were  unconsciously  bid- 
ding good-bye  to  genuine  comfort,  as  we  were  never  to 
see  in  any  hotel  of  South  America  a  room  worthy  to 
be  slept  in  by  comparison,  though  we  were  to  pay  three 
times  the  price  charged  at  the  Avenida  Palace,  which, 
at  the  time,  seemed  sufficiently  high! 

An  interesting  little  incident  on  arrival  at  Lisbon 
threw  a  gleam  of  light  on  the  manners  of  the  degen- 
erate Portuguese  nobility,  about  which  we  were  to  learn 
much  from  a  friend  who  had  resided  there  since  the 
flight  of  King  Manuel.  At  the  Gare  d'Orsay  in  Paris, 
we  noticed  that  the  next  compartment  to  ours  was  occu- 
pied by  a  tall  and  handsome  lady  and  her  little  daughter. 


FROM  LONDON  TO  LISBON  3 

Elegantly  dressed,  her  natural  but  waning  beauty  aided 
artificially,  her  hair  of  false  gold,  this  painted  lady 
offered  a  strong  contrast  to  the  group  of  relatives  who 
had  come  to  see  her  off.  At  best,  one  might  have 
judged  these  to  be  ugly  people  of  the  artisan  class;  at 
worst,  gentry  who  traded  less  honourably  in  the  ob- 
scurer byways  of  Saint  Lazarre  or  Montmartre. 
The  lady  showed  no  physical  resemblance  to  any 
of  them;  she  might  have  been  a  changeling  daugh- 
ter. Her  own  child  was  a  charming  little  creature, 
despite  her  plain  features,  and  it  was  clear  the  mother 
could  command  more  cash  than  any  of  the  shabby 
group  of  relatives  who  had  wished  them  adieu  and  bon 
voyage. 

All  the  way  to  Lisbon,  the  lady  kept  closely  to  her 
compartment,  but  the  trixy  little  daughter  made  free 
of  the  car.  On  arrival  at  the  Portuguese  capital, 
one  began  to  piece  together  the  scraps  of  a  typical 
modern  "  romance,"  as  the  pair  were  met  by  an  under- 
sized, flabby  and  slightly  deformed  young  gentleman, 
on  whom  the  child  gazed  with  all  the  interest  of  a  first 
encounter.  A  great  motor  car  was  in  waiting  and 
conveyed  them  to  our  hotel,  a  distance  of  about  two 
hundred  yards!  We  were  fated  to  see  much  of  the 
curious  trio  on  the  voyage  to  Rio  de  Janeiro.  The 
gentleman,  a  Portuguese  nobleman,  was  evidently  mak- 
ing for  the  safety  of  Brazil,  and  had  planned  to  keep 
bright  his  memories  of  Parisian  Nights  in  company  of 
one  of  the  pleasure-givers. 

One  meets  queer  ship-mates  on  the  South  American 
trip.  It  would  be  the  height  of  indiscretion  to  in- 
quire too  closely  into  the  relationship  of  many  of  the 


4  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

couples  who  sit  with  you  at  table.  Somehow  I  always 
thought  of  "  the  distinguished  member  of  the  Jockey 
Club,  with  his  niece,  h'm,  h'm !  "  in  Tartarin  sur  les 
Alpes,  when  the  Portuguese  nobleman,  with  his  lady, 
h'm,  h'm,  sat  down  at  table  with  the  rest  of  our  oddly 
assorted  company. 

There  is  a  brightness  and  a  sense  of  gaiety  about 
the  picturesque  and  beautiful  capital  of  Portugal  that 
are  most  engaging  to  the  fleeting  visitor,  but  after  a 
short  time  the  foreign  resident  finds  it  one  of  the  dullest 
of  towns,  and  has  a  lurking  sympathy  with  the  old  and 
fallen  nobility  who  sought  distraction  in  pursuits  that 
drew  only  the  poison  from  the  pleasures  of  London  and 
Paris,  and  eventually  made  of  them  the  most  corrupt 
aristocracy  in  Europe.  From  all  one  heard,  the  rev- 
olution did  not  come  a  day  too  soon,  and  seldom  have 
there  been  a  king  and  an  aristocracy  that  more  openly 
"  asked  for  it  "  than  Manuel  and  his  effeminate  nobles. 

The  mingling  of  the  negro  blood  with  the  European, 
which  is  so  marked  a  feature  of  the  Portuguese,  is 
doubtless  responsible  for  the  low  ebb  of  morality  in 
Lisbon.  The  Jewish  type  is  very  noticeable  among 
the  people  one  passes  in  the  streets,  and  especially  in 
the  women.  Altogether,  I  felt  that  the  breath  of  the 
place  was  somewhat  unwholesome,  and  Republican- 
ism cannot  possibly  make  matters  worse,  though 
national  decay  may  have  gone  too  far  for  any  sort  of 
government  to  re-vitalise  the  character  of  the  people. 
Old  Portugal's  adventurings  abroad,  which  made  her 
powerful  for  a  time,  brought  to  her  the  canker  of 
luxury  and  the  lowering  of  her  virility,  in  the  admixture 
of  the  blood  of  alien  and  vicious  peoples,  so  that  to- 


ONE  OF  THE  CROWDED  DOCKS  IN  THE  PORT  OF  BUENOS  AYRKS. 


FRIENDS  OF  EMIGRANTS  AWAITING  T"E  ARRIVAL  OF  A  SHIP. 


FROM  LONDON  TO  LISBON  5 

day  in  her  decadence  she  is  really  paying  her  final 
debts  of  empire. 

One  sign  there  was  of  hope  in  what  we  saw  —  the 
admirably  conducted  orphanage  that  occupies  the 
splendid  buildings  of  the  old  monastery  of  Belem,  hard 
by  the  memorial  of  Vasco  da  Gama,  with  its  memories 
of  Portugal's  golden  age.  Nowhere  have  I  seen  a 
finer  institution  of  its  kind,  with  better  evidence  of 
wise  charity  and  tender  care  of  the  young.  It  was  a 
good  act  that  cleared  out  the  droning  monks  and  con- 
fiscated their  building  for  its  present  humane  and  prof- 
itable use.  The  boys  are  taught  all  kinds  of  trades, 
including  agriculture,  and  some  of  them  to  whom  we 
spoke  during  their  play-hour  were  much  ahead  of  the 
scholars  of  any  English  orphanage  in  their  knowledge 
of  foreign  languages.  French  was  the  favourite, 
although  one  of  the  lads,  who  had  strong  evidence  of 
negro  origin,  spoke  both  French  and  English  admirably, 
and  told  us  he  was  studying  German. 

On  the  way  to  the  monastery  we  spent  some  time  ex- 
amining the  extraordinary  collection  of  old  royal  car- 
riages and  sedan  chairs,  housed  in  a  plain  modern 
building.  These  relics  of  the  gorgeous  past  are  even 
more  remarkable  in  their  prodigal  ostentation  than 
those  of  the  famous  collection  at  Versailles,  and  will 
probably  be  guarded  by  the  Republic  as  evidence  that 
the  spendthrift  kings  who  so  long  oppressed  the  country 
went  to  sinful  extremes  in  their  love  of  ostentation  and 
luxury,  though  all  the  same  I  would  not  swap  a  six- 
teen horse  power  car  for  the  whole  collection,  if  it 
were  comfort  I  was  after! 

The  driver  of  the  motor  car  we  had  hired  would 


6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

have  been  kept  in  solitary  confinement  in  any  peaceful 
country,  for  he  was  a  public  danger,  yet  when  we  had 
loaded  up  with  our  luggage  at  the  hotel  we  came  near 
to  missing  the  ship,  as  "  something  went  wrong  with 
the  works, "  and  the  reckless  driver  proved  so  incom- 
petent a  mechanic  that  we  had  eventually  to  transfer 
ourselves  and  our  light  luggage  (the  heavy  having 
been  shipped  in  England)  to  another  taxi,  and  so  reach 
the  quay,  where  for  a  mere  trifle  of  2,000  reis  ($2) 
two  brawny  rascals  put  our  bags  on  board  the  tender, 
with  more  fuss  than  an  English  porter  would  have 
made  over  shifting  a  car-load. 

In  a  few  minutes  more  we  were  aboard  the  liner 
that  was  to  carry  us  across  the  sunlit  seas  to  that  other 
America  which  is  so  different  from  the  Northern  Con- 
tinent and  of  which  Americans  really  know  so  little. 


CHAPTER  II 

OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE   RIVER  PLATE 

WE  had  laughed  at  the  story  of  some  Englishmen  in  f 
Lisbon,  told  us  by  a  friend  there.  He  overheard  a 
group  of  typical  John  Bull  tourists,  who  had  been 
"  doing  "  a  fortnight  in  Portugal,  discussing  their  ex- 
periences on  their  way  to  the  boat.  The  weather  had 
been  superb  all  the  time;  they  had  been  steeped  in  sun- 
shine; yet  the  reflection  which  seemed  to  find  most 
favour  was  the  remark  of  a  burly  Yorkshireman : 
'  Thank  'eaven,  boys,  no  more  of  this  damned  glare 
for  a  while!  " 

But  we  were  seekers  of  sunshine,  prepared  to  ac- 
cept all  that  came  our  way,  so  it  was  with  light  hearts 
we  heard  the  engines  throb  and  felt  the  vessel  resume 
her  voyage.  The  Franco-Portuguese  couple  with  the 
little  girl  and  ourselves  were  all  who  came  aboard  at 
Lisbon,  which  looked  a  veritable  city  of  dream  as  we 
steamed  out  through  the  wide  waters  of  the  Tagus. 
Seen  from  the  river,  there  are  few  finer  prospects 
than  the  long  and  diversified  coast  line  of  Lisbon, 
culminating  in  the  castled  height  of  Cintra.  A  soft 
haze  of  heat  blurred  the  outlines  of  the  hills  and 
touched  them  much  in  the  manner  of  those  feathery 
old  landscape  engravings  that  used  to  adorn  the  art 
books  of  fifty  years  ago. 

There  was  a  fairly  large  number  of  passengers 
aboard,  but  we  soon  discovered  that  the  majority  were 

7 


8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

only  bound  for  Las  Palmas,  excluding  tfie  second  class 
and  some  three  hundred  Spanish  and  Portuguese  emi- 
grants herded  like  cattle  in  the  steerage.  The  dinner 
bell  rang  soon  after  we  had  settled  in  our  new  quar- 
ters, and  for  two  weeks  or  so  our  days  now  slipped 
away,  punctuated  by  the  ship's  bells.  This  orderly 
division  of  time  speedily  produces  a  mental  condition 
that  makes  for  calm  and  good  health.  With  nothing 
to  do  but  engage  in  an  occasional  game  of  deck  golf, 
or  lounge  in  your  canvas  chair  reading  a  novel,  and  be 
prompt  to  answer  the  summons  of  the  bells  that  ring 
you  to  your  meals,  the  days  fade  into  each  other,  like 
the  old-fashioned  dissolving  views,  and  with  never  a 
suggestion  of  weariness.  Indeed,  I  often  wondered  if 
it  might  not  be  that  a  term  of  imprisonment  would  be 
almost  as  efficacious  in  bringing  calm  to  the  troubled 
spirit  and  health  to  the  wearied  body.  Certainly  a 
spell  of  monastic  life  would  be  as  good  a  "  rest  cure." 
But,  on  the.  whole,  I  felt  the  steamer  chair  had  its  ad- 
vantages and  although  I  had  taken  with  me  the  notes 
for  a  book  I  had  had  in  hand  for  years,  intent  on  ad- 
vancing that  in  my  days  of  idleness,  it  was  with  a  great 
content  that  I  found  it  impossible  to  fix  my  mind  on 
any  thought  of  work  in  those  serene  days  of  sailing 
over  sunny  seas.  Nothing  seemed  to  matter,  even  the 
frequent  ticking  of  the  "  wireless  "  was  somewhat  of 
an  intrusion  on  our  ocean  peace. 

In  a  voyage  of  so  little  incident,  when  the  chief  ex- 
citement is  contrived  by  arranging  sweepstakes  on  the 
day's  mileage  of  the  vessel,  there  is  plenty  of  time  to 
study  one's  fellow  passengers,  and  for  this  a  small  com- 
pany, such  as  we  were  after  leaving  Las  Palmas,  is 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE          9 

probably  more  interesting  than  a  large  one.  There 
were  only  some  thirty  saloon  passengers  and  naturally 
there  was  much  interchange  of  gossip,  the  ship's  officers 
proving  especially  companionable.  A  small  company 
has  the  disadvantage,  however,  that  the  chronicler  can- 
not well  describe  his  companion  voyagers  with  that 
easy  frankness  he  may  safely  bestow  upon  a  crowd. 
The  possibilities  of  mutual  identification  are  enor- 
mously increased. 

Yet  in  the  little  handful  of  voyagers  with  whom  we 
sailed  there  was  a  remarkable  mingling  of  character: 
potentialities  of  tragedy  and  comedy,  a  microcosm  of 
the  social  world.  One  could  find  much  to  say  of  them. 
I  must  content  myself,  however,  with  a  few  vague 
touches. 

I  found  that  one  of  the  passengers  who  had  made 
himself  most  eminent  in  the  companionship  of  the 
saloon  was  an  intimate  of  one  of  my  oldest  friends  in 
a  far-distant  city  —  so  tiny  is  this  great  world  of  ours. 
He  was  a  gentleman  in  whom  there  survived  something 
of  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Pleydell  in  his  Saturday  evening 
"  high  jinks,"  and  maintained  that  character  in  the 
smoking  room  (where  every  night  was  Saturday)  with 
a  small  but  admiring  audience  whom  he  addressed  as 
"  my  loyal  subjects."  "  Tell  me,"  he  would  say, 
"  what  thou  would  that  we,  of  our  royal  will,  might 
do  this  evening  for  our  own  and  thy  diversion."  And 
with  varying  qualities  of  the  lamely  jocular  they  would 
give  their  suggestions.  It  was  all  very  pathetic  to  an 
onlooker:  the  frank  and  insatiable  egotism  of  "  Uncle  " 
(as  we  dubbed  this  worthy  of  the  ruddy  visage),  his 
determination  to  hear  the  beloved  sound  of  his  own 


io  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

voice  in  hoary  anecdote  and  threadbare  jest.  I  was 
very  patient  with  him,  as  I  shall  ever  be  with  one  who 
has  passed  many  years  of  his  life  in  South  America  - 
he  should  be  allowed  a  large  charter  of  liberty  for  all 
that  he  has  suffered  of  social  hunger  and  intellectual 
thirst.  At  first  I  resented  somewhat  the  obtrusive 
nature  of  this  worthy  Scot's  companionship,  but,  some- 
how, before  the  journey's  end  we  were  good  friends. 
I  think  a  voyage  of  this  kind  teaches  one  tolerance,  and 
it  is  surprising  how  the  most  apparently  incompatible 
units  may  draw  together  by  the  practice  of  even  a  little 
toleration.  As  "  Uncle  "  observed  in  his  soft  Scots 
voice:  "  Mun,  I  was  even  beginning  to  like  Brixton," 
naming  a  young  man  who  joined  us  at  Pernambuco,  and 
who,  by  reason  of  a  most  pronounced  tendency  to 
"  swank,"  made  a  bad  first  impression. 

Mention  of  this  passenger,  by  the  way,  reminds  me 
that  his  unfortunate  habit  of  capping  every  story,  go- 
ing one  better  than  everybody  else,  kept  most  of  us  at 
arm's  length  for  a  day  or  two.  If  one  said  he  had 
yellow  fever,  Brixton  had  had  it  twice ;  if  another  had 
made  two  voyages  to  Africa,  Brixton  had  made  five  or 
six;  if  a  third  had  shot  a  hare,  Brixton  had  shot  an  ele- 
phant. Everywhere  he  had  been  he  had  met  with  hair- 
raising  adventures.  In  Pernambuco,  he  had  to  use  his 
revolver  every  night  to  scare  away  the  burglars.  How 
many  had  he  killed?  "  I  winged  one  of  the  devils  any- 
how! "  And  in  proof  he  passed  round  his  revolver. 
Yellow  Jack  was  raging  in  the  town  when  he  left,  he 
assured  us;  but  somehow  he  had  been  allowed  to  come 
on  board  quietly  and  make  us  shiver  with  recital  of  the 
horrors  he  had  escaped.  Of  course,  we  doubted  every 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        11 

word  that  Brixton  said  and  yet  on  many  points  I  have 
since  had  occasion  to  test  his  statements  and  never  once 
have  I  found  that  he  lied.  He  told  the  truth  as  he 
saw  it,  and  he  was  an  entertaining  and  good-hearted 
Englishman,  who  had  forgot  in  growing  up  to  cast  off 
certain  habits  of  thought  and  talk  which  are  delightful 
in  Tom  Sawyers  and  Huck  Finns,  but  are  apt  to  con- 
vey wrong  impressions  of  handsome,  well-groomed 
Mr.  Brixtons! 

Perhaps  our  quaintest  voyager  was  an  ugly  French- 
man, who  had  been  christened  "  Dr.  Crippen,"  before 
the  ship  had  reached  Lisbon.  He  certainly  bore  some 
resemblance  to  that  misguided  gentleman  who  stood  so 
eminently  in  the  world's  eye  for  a  time,  and  the  hu- 
mour of  the  situation  was  that  he  had  never  heard  of 
Crippen,  and  rather  thought  it  was  some  sort  of  dimly 
conceived  English  compliment  to  him.  He  spoke  no 
word  of  our  barbaric  tongue,  and  when  "  Uncle  "  pre- 
sided at  a  mock  trial  of  "  Dr.  Crippen  "  the  prisoner 
was  vastly  amused,  until  he  found  himself  condemned 
to  an  hour's  solitary  confinement  in  a  bath-room.  He 
was  much  given  to  patronising  the  bar  and  passed  the 
most  of  his  days  in  a  state  of  happy  fuddle;  yet  I  after- 
wards learned  that  his  was  one  of  the  clearest  brains 
that  control  a  great  and  world-famous  organisation  in 
France  and  when  he  left  us,  it  was  a  new  and  extremely 
sober  "  Dr.  Crippen  "  who  stepped  ashore  to  carry  out 
a  very  delicate  and  difficult  business  mission. 

There  was  no  American  or  English  lady  among  the 
saloon  passengers,  but  we  had  Scots,  Irish,  Danish, 
French,  Spanish,  and  Peruvian.  Of  none  that  were 
ladies  shall  I  speak,  but  two  who  were  something  else 


12  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

deserve  a  note.  'Tis  ever  thus;  virtue  is, so  lacking  in 
the  picturesque.  As  a  connoisseur  of  dancing,  I  was  in- 
terested to  discover  that  we  had  aboard  a  famous 
danseuse,  most  charming  of  all  the  pupils  of  the  great 
Loi'e  Fuller,  who  was  on  her  way  to  the  Casino  at 
Buenos  Ayres  —  a  resort  of  dubious  fame,  according 
to  current  belief  among  our  music-hall  performers. 
But  as  I  had  many  a  time  been  charmed  by  the  exqui- 
site art  of  the  said  pupil  of  Loi'e  Fuller  (whose  name  is 
as  widely  known  as  that  of  her  teacher)  I  had  no  diffi- 
culty in  deciding  that  the  plain  and  vulgar  Spanish  con- 
tortionist who  was  going  to  stamp  her  heavy  feet  and 
twist  her  decidedly  shapely  body  before  the  jovenes 
distinguidos  of  the  Casino  was  merely  trading  in  the 
name  of  a  celebrity.  Her  luggage  bore  the  famous 
name  in  huge  letters,  and  I  afterwards  saw  it  "  billed  " 
widely  in  Buenos  Ayres. 

On  the  whole,  the  conduct  of  this  Spanish  dancer 
during  the.  voyage  was  so  openly  without  sense  of  shame 
that  there  was  little  one  could  object  to!  Sometimes 
she  appeared  in  gorgeous  raiment  and  an  enormous 
"picture  hat,"  ready  for  the  Bois  or  the  Alameda; 
even,  on  one  occasion,  sporting  a  huge  muff  in  the  trop- 
ics! Again  she  would  pass  the  day  in  bedroom  slip- 
pers, her  corsets  put  aside,  her  lithe  body  draped  only 
in  a  dressing  gown,  and  her  golden  hair  of  yesterday, 
completely  doffed,  leaving  only  a  shabby  little  nob  of 
faded  brown.  She  entangled  at  least  one  of  the  male 
passengers,  a  Chilian  who  later  found  another  flame  in 
an  attractive  demi-mondame  of  the  second  class,  and  it 
afforded  us  some  amusement  to  watch  the  rivalry 
which  now  ensued,  but  there  was  little  sympathy  when 


!  r  r  *  l '"" 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        13 

the  gay  Lothario  came  to  the  end  of  his  cash  and  at- 
tempted to  borrow. 

The  other  "  interesting  lady  "  of  the  saloon  was  of 
quite  a  different  type.  A  French  chanteuse  of  the 
smaller  cafe  concerts,  she  was  extremely  plain  by  na- 
ture's wish,  but  the  art  of  make-up  and  some  potent 
hair-dye  effected  a  magical  change  the  day  she  left  us. 
She  behaved  herself  modestly  enough  and  passed  most 
of  her  time  with  her  crochet  needle,  sitting  side  by  side 
with  the  honest  women  aboard,  yet  I  was  told  that  her 
songs  would  have  brought  a  blush  to  the  cheeks  of  a 
stevedore !  She  sang  to  us  several  dainty  and  harm- 
less little  French  and  Spanish  verses  in  the  familiar 
cafe  chantant  manner,  and  altogether  left  the  impres- 
sion of  a  poor  woman  laying  out  her  small  gifts  to  the 
best  advantage. 

There  was  little  or  no  intercourse  between  the  saloon 
passengers  and  those  of  the  second  class,  although  it 
seemed  to  me  that  among  the  latter  were  many  worthy 
people  and  a  good-hearted  companionship.  They  cer- 
tainly showed  to  advantage  in  the  diverting  ceremony 
observed  when  Father  Neptune  held  court  on  crossing 
the  line.  Included  among  them  were  a  number  of 
minor  "  artistes  "  bound  for  the  music-halls  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  not  to  mention  several  young  women  with  a  still 
less  attractive  journey's  end  in  view. 

We  heard  much  from  the  old  South  Atlantic  voy- 
agers on  board  about  the  doings  on  other  and  more 
popular  lines  than  that  to  which  our  vessel  belonged. 
The  "  muck-raking  "  magazines  might  work  up  a  spicy 
stew  of  scandal  about  life  on  the  South  American  liners 
if  they  gave  themselves  to  the  task.  Wealthy  Argen- 


14  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tines  and  Brazilians  travelling  with  their  wives  in  the 
saloon  and  two  or  three  concubines  in  the  second  class, 
offer  quite  attractive  material  for  the  journalist  in 
search  of  the  spicy,  while  the  traffic  in  "  white  slaves  " 
has  long  provided  a  certain  percentage  of  the  passen- 
gers for  these  very  profitable  lines,  in  which,  perchance, 

/some  dear  old  Christian  ladies  have  their  investments. 

f  How  difficult  it  is  to  keep  one's  hands  clean  in  this 

!  soiled  world ! 

From  all  that  I  have  been  told,  and  also  from  per- 
sonal- observation,  the  perils  of  the  deep  may  have  a 
curious  resemblance  to  the  perils  of  "  the  Great  White 
Way."  And  even  those  who  ought  to  be  the  protec- 
tors of  innocence  may  prove  to  be  its  assailants.  A 
young  married  lady,  lately  arrived  from  England,  was 
under  the  pain  of  having  to  travel  alone  from  Buenos 
Ayres  to  a  Brazilian  port  where  her  husband  was  lying 
in  hospital  with  typhoid,  and  her  plain  story  of  how 
the  purser,  under  cloak  of  sympathy  for  her  in  her  dis- 
tress, first  ingratiated  himself  by  talking  sentimental 
slop  about  his  wife  and  bairns  at  home,  getting  her  to 
go  into  his  cabin  to  look  at  the  treasured  photographs 
of  his  "  dear  ones,"  and  there,  without  more  ado,  at- 
tempted to  assail  the  honour  of  the  young  wife,  whose 
miental  sufferings  at  the  time  were,  to  my  knowledge, 
almost  beyond  endurance,  is  one  of  the  ugliest  I  have 
heard.  This  was  an  English  officer,  note  you :  none 
of  your  sensual  Italians. 

^  It  is  to  be  feared  that  much  co-mingling  with  pimps 
and  procurers  may  have  tended  somewhat  to  blunt  the 
native  honour  of  the  Englishman  in  these  southern 
latitudes,  for,  up  to  a  day  so  recent  that  it  seems  but 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        15 

yesterday,  nothing  had  been  done  to  dam  the  foul 
stream  that  has  flowed  so  long  from  the  human  sewers 
of  Europe  into  the  still  more  noisome  mares  slag- 
nantes  of  Buenos  Ayres.^  Now,  there  is  at  least  some 
pretence  of  stemming  it,  and  from  time  to  time  one 
reads  in  the  Buenos  Ayres  papers  about  the  latest  raid 
on  the  "  apaches,"  who  are  deported,  with  much  pomp 
and  circumstance,  or  about  the  rejected  of  Paris,  in  the 
shape  of  womankind,  who  are  refused  admission  to  the 
city  of  good  airs. 

But  to  return  to  a  pleasanter,  if  less  piquant  subject, 
our  voyage  deserves  at  least  a  few  words  of  descrip- 
tion. We  seemed  to  be  lying  off  Las  Palmas  before 
the  beautiful  picture  of  Lisbon  in  sunshine  had  quite 
faded  from  our  vision,  and  at  this  distance  of  time  I 
would  not  undertake  to  say  whether  it  was  two  or  three 
days  that  had  passed  between  the  two  ports,  so  dreamy 
was  our  progress.  The  sight  of  Las  Palmas,  with  its 
grateful  greenness  of  hill  and  valley,  and  far  south- 
ward, cloud-high  in  a  gorgeous  flood  of  sunshine,  the 
mighty  mass  of  Teneriffe,  thrusting  itself  boldly  into 
the  sky  from  the  heaving  wilderness  of  water,  gave  to 
the  beholder  one  of  those  rare  moments  of  spiritual 
exaltation  which  a  first  sight  of  such  natural  grandeur 
must  always  awaken  in  the  thinking  mind. 

St.  Vincent  was  a  different  story.  Fully  two  days 
more  steaming  brought  us  thither  to  that  vile  haunt  of 
malaria  and  all  things  unlovely.  The  Cape  Verde  Is- 
lands, of  which  St.  Vincent  is  the  principal,  dishonour 
the  name  they  bear,  as  there  is  scarce  a  speck  of  verd- 
ure to  be  seen  upon  them.  Presumably  there  must  be 
some  natural  reason  for  the  naming  of  the  Cape  itself 


16  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

on  the  African  coast,  off  which,  nearly  five  hundred 
miles  north-westward,  these  scabby  isles  show  their 
horrid  heads  above  the  blue  Atlantic.  They  are  of  a 
dirty  red  colour,  and  at  a  distance  resemble  some 
humpy  monsters  of  the  deep  wallowing  in  the  sunshine. 
The  port  is  useful  as  a  coaling  and  cable  station.  A 
town  of  shanties,  it  swarms  with  negroes,  and  ships' 
pedlars.  Here  a  small  colony  of  young  Britons  are 
marooned  in  the  cable  service.  At  first  the  young 
cable  operator  is  no  doubt  delighted  to  find  how  much 
more  picturesque  he  has  become  than  he  was  at  home. 
To  have  to  wear  white  duck  suits  and  a  pith  helmet, 
and  look  like  Stanley  on  his  way  to  discover  Living- 
stone, is  extremely  attractive  to  the  eye  of  youth ! 
Even  the  gentleman  who  sells  coals  to  the  liners  comes 
on  board  looking  for  all  the  world  like  a  colonial  gov- 
ernor, or  the  leader  of  a  mission  to  Abyssinia.  Then 
there  is  much  card-playing  and  a  good  deal  of  hard- 
drinking  among  "  the  boys,"  who  talk  of  "  the  service 
and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  dontcher  know,"  to  feed 
youth's  fondness  for  swagger.  But  when  the  debili- 
tating effects  of  the  climate  and  the  life  make  them- 
selves felt,  when  the  novelty  has  gone,  what  a  husk 
remains !  Lucky  are  the  young  men  who  escape  from 
these  rusty  isles  before  the  rot  of  the  place  has  eaten 
too  deeply  into  their  natures.  The  harbour  swarms 
with  sharks,  but  the  negro  boys  who  dive  for  the 
amusement  of  the  passengers  on  the  ships  that  put 
in  there  make  light  of  the  sharks  for  a  sixpence,  or 
even  for  a  humble  penny  thrown  into  the  water. 

St.  Vincent  gave  us  our  last  glimpse  of  the  Old 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        17 

World.  Its  very  ugliness  sent  our  thoughts  zestfully 
forward  to  the  undiscovered  beauties  of  the  New,  then 
so  full  of  promise,  now  —  but  that's  a  later  story.  It 
was  pleasant  to  hear  again  the  long  soft  swish  of  the 
water  running  past  the  vessel's  sides  as  she  resumed 
her  tranquil  voyage  into  the  sunset.  Now  succeeded 
many  days  of  idle  lolling  in  the  deck  chair,  watching 
through  the  binoculars  the  swarms  of  flying  fish  skim- 
ming over  the  surface  of  the  ocean  like  tiniest  aero- 
planes. 

Bird  life  in  these  ocean  solitudes  is  rare,  yet  we  not 
only  saw  several  journeying  on  confident  wing  several 
hundred  miles  from  land,  but  for  two  or  three  days  we 
were  forcibly  reminded  of  "  Nature  red  in  tooth  and 
claw,"  by  witnessing  a  little  drama  in  feathers.  One 
day  out  from  St.  Vincent  a  bird,  about  the  size  of  a 
pigeon,  gorgeously  coloured  and  sporting  a  plume  of 
orange-red,  alighted  on  the  rigging  of  the  ship,  pursued 
by  a  larger  hawk-like  bird.  Evidently  the  pursuit  had 
lasted  for  a  long  time,  as  both  were  land  birds  and 
seemed  very  exhausted,  for  we  were  now  some  hun- 
dreds of  miles  from  the  African  coast,  whence  hunter 
and  hunted  had  no  doubt  flown.  For  two  or  three 
days  a  strange  game  of  cross  purposes  ensued,  the 
hunted,  with  the  skill  of  desperation,  cleverly  selecting 
different  positions  in  the  rigging  or  on  the  smoke- 
stacks, which  offered  no  opportunity  to  the  hunter  to 
swoop  down  on  him  from  above.  There  were  violent 
chasings  at  times  around  the  ship,  when  the  essential 
cruelty  of  the  Spanish  emigrants  was  displayed  in  their 
efforts  to  strike  the  pursued  bird  with  all  sorts  of  ob- 


i8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

jects  hurled  at  it  as  it  swept  past  the  bows.  Eventually 
the  hawk  gave  up  and  disappeared  and  soon  afterward 
the  bird  of  brilliant  plumage  took  wing  away. 

Seldom  did  we  sight  another  vessel;  now  and  again 
we  signalled  a  tramp  or  a  collier  heading  south  with  its 
cargo  from  Wales  to  be  sold  eventually  in  Buenos 
Ayres  at  some  $20  or  $25  per  ton  —  it  was  during  the 
time  of  the  coal  strike.  One  only  of  the  old  "  wind- 
jammers "  did  we  pass.  In  full  sail,  she  looked,  in  the 
blue  immensity  of  the  tranquil  sea,  no  bigger  than  a 
toy  boat,  and  an  object  of  such  appropriate  grace  and 
beauty  that  it  was  sad  to  think  a  day  would  come  when 
no  ship  that  goes  by  spread  of  glistening  sail  would 
cross  those  far  waters  again. 

Early  on  the  sixth  day  out  from  St.  Vincent,  on 
going  on  deck  before  breakfast  we  were  not  a  little 
surprised  to  find  that  we  were  steaming  close  to  a  long 
and  narrow  green  island  on  which  many  signs  of  care- 
ful cultivation  were  evident.  In  a  cove  the  white 
houses  of  a  township  showed  clear  and  inviting  in  the 
morning  air,  the  blue  smoke  curling  from  some  of  the 
chimneys  giving  one  an  intense  pang  of  home  hunger. 
With  the  binoculars  it  was  easy  to  make  out  people  go- 
ing about  their  tasks  in  the  fields,  others  walking  to- 
wards what  seemed  to  be  a  signalling  station.  The 
surprise  at  this  sudden  coming  upon  a  bit  of  the  hab- 
itated  globe  in  what,  for  all  we  had  supposed  the  night 
before,  was  still  mid-ocean,  sent  us  questioning  to  the 
officers  of  the  ship.  The  island  turned  out  to  be  Fer- 
nando de  Norona,  notable  chiefly  as  a  Brazilian  penal 
settlement.  A  Brazilian  —  the  only  one  among  our 
company  —  told  me  a  story  about  Fernando  de  No- 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        19 

rofia  which,  speaking  in  Spanish,  he  considered  muy 
graciosa.  An  Englishman  in  Pernambuco  killed  a  na- 
tive in  a  quarrel  and  was  sent  to  the  penal  isle,  but  in 
the  course  of  a  year  or  less  he  was  granted  his  liberty, 
that  being  a  matter  of  simple  negotiation:  a  little  influ- 
ence and  a  modicum  of  money  can  always  save  a  crim- 
inal in  that  happy  clime.  But,  the  Englishman,  having 
long  suffered  a  shrewish  wife,  found  so  much  peace  in 
prison  that  he  refused  to  quit  the  island  and  there  re- 
mains. Fernando  de  Norona  lies  some  two  hundred 
miles  off  the  north  eastern  shoulder  of  Brazil,  and  by 
that  token  we  were  soon  to  be  touching  at  Pernambuco 
and  hugging  the  Brazilian  coast  for  the  rest  of  our 
voyage. 

One  felt  almost  sorry  that  the  sunny  days  of  serene 
steaming  over  shoreless  seas  were  coming  to  an  end 
and  that  presently  we  would  be  picking  up  the  coast  of 
the  new  world.  By  now  we  had  grown  so  used  to  the 
companionship  of  the  boat  that  we  began  to  look  for- 
ward to  leaving  it  with  something  of  regret. 

At  Pernambuco  we  had  our  first  sight  of  a  South 
American  town  and  I  should  be  departing  widely  from 
the  truth  were  I  to  say  that  the  "  Venice  of  Brazil  " 
tugged  at  my  heart-strings.  It  is  a  town  of  evil-smell- 
ing water-ways,  half-finished  streets,  at  their  best  no 
better  than  a  London  byway,  with  cut-throat  quarters 
that  harbour  all  uncleanness.  The  task  of  going 
ashore,  first  being  lowered  into  a  bobbing  dingy  by 
means  of  a  rope  and  basket,  is  attended  with  a  sensa- 
tion of  nausea  which  the  merry  assurance  of  the  old 
skipper  by  your  side  as  to  the  water  being  a  favourite 
haunt  of  sharks  does  little  to  counteract,  especially 


20  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

when  his  trained  eye  enables  him,  a  moment  or  two 
later,  to  point  out  several  of  these  hunting  for  garbage 
around  the  ship.  It  is  fair  to  say  of  Pernambuco  that 
it  is  undergoing  transformation :  the  "  avenida  "  craze 
has  taken  root  and  at  the  time  of  our  visit  innumerable 
shanties  were  being  demolished  to  make  way  for  wide 
avenues  and  new  buildings. 

The  first  sensation  of  crossing  a  great  sea  and  mak- 
ing land  on  its  farther  shore,  once  experienced  —  and 
it  is  a  "thrill"  that  never  comes  again  —  we  sank 
back  into  the  half-indifferent  contemplation  of  the  long, 
indented  coast  line  of  this  prodigious  land  of  Brazil. 
For  hundreds  of  miles  it  is  unchanging  in  its  character 
of  paln>fringed  shores,  with  great  dim  mountain 
masses  inland,  a  soft  blur  of  heat  overhanging  all. 
There  is  plenty  to  suggest  mystery  and  romance,  and 
yet  somehow  beauty  is  lacking.  I  mean  the  wild 
beauty  of  peak  and  crag  which  we  find  along  the  coasts 
of  Scotland,  where  the  conformation  is  continually 
changing.  These  mountains  of  Brazil  have  that  vol- 
canic sameness  which  only  becomes  magnificent  when 
you  can  ascend  to  some  commanding  pinnacle  and  look 
down  upon  a  veritable  wilderness  of  mighty  earth 
mounds,  such  as  it  was  my  good  fortune  once  to  look 
upon  from  the  tower  of  the  ancient  castle  of  Polignac 
in  the  volcanic  heart  of  France. 

For  many  nights  the  tropical  skies  had  been  a  reve- 
lation of  stellar  glory,  and  often  though  I  have  gazed 
at  the  friendly  skies  of  home  on  u  a  beautiful  clear 
night  of  stars  "  (to  quote  the  haunting  phrase  of  "  R. 
L.  S.  "),  little  had  I  imagined  the  glories  that  awaited 
the  beholder  of  the  heavens  in  a  clear  tropical  night. 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        21 

The  stars  appear  much  larger  and  incomparably  more 
brilliant  than  I  have  ever  seen  them  in  our  northern 
latitudes,  nor  do  they  "  stud  "  the  sky  so  much  as  hang 
dependent  from  the  dense  dark  blue.  I  had  many 
starlight  talks  with  the  old  skipper  who  was  travelling 
to  a  "  shore  job  "  (the  dream  of  every  sailor!)  on  the 
Pacific,  and  who  spoke  of  the  stars  which  had  guided 
him  so  long  on  his  voyages  with  that  familiarity  of  the 
worthy  old  Scots  minister  "  who,  ye  micht  hae  thought, 
had  been  born  and  brocht  up  among  them."  Yet  I 
have  failed  on  many  occasions  since  to  rediscover  the 
interesting  relationships  of  the  constellations  which  he 
so  clearly  explained  to  me.  I  confess,  however,  to  a 
keen  sense  of  disappointment  in  the  much  vaunted 
Southern  Cross.  It  is  a  lop-sided  and  unimpressive 
group  of  four  stars. 

The  sight  of  Bahia,  about  one  day's  steam  from 
Pernambuco,  was  peculiarly  pleasing.  It  might  have 
been  a  bit  of  the  French  or  Italian  Riviera,  with  its 
rich  verdure  and  bosky  hills,  while  the  residential  sub- 
urbs looked  quite  European  as  seen  from  the  ship. 
We  made  no  closer  acquaintance  than  a  stay  of  some 
three  hours  in  the  beautiful  bay,  but  I  could  well  be- 
lieve that  much  that  looked  most  alluring  in  the  pic- 
turesque sea-front  of  the  town  did  not  bear  too  close 
inspection. 

Two  more  days  brought  us  to  Rio  de  Janeiro,  full  of 
expectation  and  curiosity  for  the  pearl  of  South  Amer- 
ica. The  bay  of  Rio  has  been  so  often  photographed, 
so  fully  described,  that  any  one  who  has  read  much 
must  have  a  good  mental  picture  of  the  place,  which 
fortunately  squares  very  neatly  with  the  actuality. 


22  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

The  fantastic  islands  of  volcanic  origin  which  peep 
up  through  the  broad  waters  of  the  bay,  or  impu- 
dently flaunt  their  grassy  cones  high  above  sea  level, 
in  the  most  unexpected  places,  give  to  Rio,  as  seen  from 
the  bay,  an  aspect  that  is  unique.  The  town  spreads  it- 
self out  with  picturesque  irregularity  among  the  gentle 
valleys  that  lie  between  the  many  hills,  trending  swiftly 
upward  some  little  way  inland  from  the  shore,  the  no- 
ble height  of  Corcovado  crowning  the  whole  lively  and 
diversified  scene.  These  hills  being  mostly  tropical  in, 
the  richness  and  character  of  their  vegetation,  the  art 
of  man  had  no  great  task  to  transform  the  situation 
into  one  of  the  world's  most  beautiful  cities. 

On  the  whole,  man  has  here  done  his  work  well,  al- 
though it  has  to  be  confessed  that  much  of  the  archi- 
tecture is  paltry  and  all  of  the  plaster  variety.  The 
marine  drive  will  match  almost  anything  of  the  kind  in 
Europe,  and  the  Avenida  Central  is  admirably  devised 
at  once  to  .beautify  the  town  and  drain  the  pressing  traf- 
fic of  the  narrower  side  streets.  The  suburbs  are  also 
spacious  and  well  planned,  so  that  one  could  imagine 
life  being  very  pleasant  here  —  when  the  weather  is  a 
little  cooler  than  the  norm.  Although  the  summer  was 
supposed  to  be  over  at  the  time  of  our  visit,  the  atmos- 
phere was  enervating  in  the  extreme,  and  even  on  the 
breezy  heights  of  Corcovado,  to  which  we  ascended  by 
the  funicular,  and  whence  one  of  the  grandest  pros- 
pects man  may  look  upon  rewarded  us,  we  perspired  at 
every  step.  Everywhere  there  was  the  moist,  oppres- 
sive smell  of  the  hot-house,  so  that  one  could  guess 
what  it  meant  to  be  afoot  in  Rio  in  the  summer  time,  if 
this  were  autumn. 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE        23 

As  for  living  here:  when  we  were  charged  twelve 
milreis  ($6.50)  for  a  dish  of  fruit  that  might  have 
cost  a  dollar  in  New  York,  at  a  very  ordinary  hotel, 
where  all  other  charges  were  proportionately  appal- 
ling, we  had  our  doubts,  even  granted  a  change  of 
weather.  One  of  our  party  paid  the  equivalent  of  four 
dollars  for  a  tooth-brush,  a  cake  of  soap,  a  small  tube 
of  lanoline,  and  some  shaving  powder ! 

Paying  an  uniformed  madman,  who  was  plying  for 
hire  with  a  motor  car,  a  few  thousand  reis  (a  milreis 
or  one  thousand  reis  go  to  54  cents,  so  that  you  part 
with  them  in  tens  of  thousands  in  a  forenoon),  we 
drove  all  around  the  city  and  the  Marina  at  fully  thirty 
miles  an  hour,  turning  busy  corners  at  that  speed.  I 
myself  can  claim  some  dexterity  at  the  wheel;  but  I 
confess  that  I  sat  in  terror  in  that  maniac's  car  as  we 
sped  wildly  through  the  highways  and  byways  of  Rio. 
Yet  he  was  perfectly  sane  as  motorists  are  accounted 
sane  in  that  town;  his  performance  evoking  no  remark. 
The  speed  limit  is,  I  believe,  eight  or  ten  miles  an  hour, 
but,  like  all  the  laws  of  Latin  America,  that  is  laid 
down  merely  to  be  ignored.  The  municipal  authori- 
ties, however,  use  the  bylaw  as  a  supplementary  ta6c, 
and  regularly  fine  all  the  motorists  of  the  town,  in  suc- 
cession, for  exceeding  the  limit.  A  well-known  Eng- 
lish resident  who  owns  a  speedy  car  told  me  he  had 
been  fined  a  month  before  for  exceeding  the  limit  on  a 
certain  date,  when  he  had  been  on  the  high  seas  re- 
turning from  Europe.  He  protested,  lodged  his  plea, 
and  was  fined  all  the  same,  jbn  the  ground  that  if  he  did 
not  exceed  the  limit  that  day,  he  had  done  so  in  all  cer- 
tainty before  or  after. 


24  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Altogether  our  impressions  of  Rio  were  favourable. 
Every  prospect  pleased  us;  only  man  was  vile,  and  none 
viler  than  the  scum  that  haunt  the  sea-front  to  plunder 
visitors  by  getting  them  aboard  their  small  boats  for 
conveyance  to  the  liners  in  the  bay,  then,  with  sundry 
sinister  threats,  endeavour  (too  often  successfully)  to 
make  their  victims  disgorge  a  payment  large  enough  to 
purchase  the  boat.  The  gentry  who  ply  this  trade  at 
Naples  are  mild  and  benevolent  by  comparison. 

About  noon  of  the  day  following  our  stop  at  Rio, 
we  were  steaming  up  the  picturesque  estuary  of  Santos. 
A  Frenchman  on  board  had  promised  me  that  here  I 
should  see  something  tout  a  fait  original,  and  much 
though  I  had  been  charmed  with  the  actual  sight  of 
Rio,  so  long  familiar  to  me  in  picture,  the  approach  to 
Santos  proved  even  more  interesting,  due  perhaps  in 
some  degree  to  the  charm  of  the  unknown  and  unex- 
pected. There  is  also  a  touch  of  romance  in  slowly 
approaching  a  town  that  lies  up  a  river,  instead  of  com- 
ing upon  it  suddenly  from  the  sea.  A  negro  pilot  took 
command  of  the  ship  up  to  Santos,  somewhat  to  the 
disgust  of  our  captain,  who  had  never  before  stood  by 
a  "  nigger  "  on  the  bridge  and  seemed  none  too  sure 
of  his  pilot,  for  he  never  let  go  the  telegraph  handle 
until  his  vessel  was  berthed. 

The  country  through  which  the  river  runs  (it  is 
more  an  arm  of  the  sea  than  a  river)  is  undoubtedly 
"  original,"  abounding  in  low  volcanic  hills,  with  abun- 
dance of  verdure,  broken  now  and  then  by  palm  groves, 
and  swampy  flats.  Here  one  is  conscious  of  being  in  a 
strange  land,  and  it  is  easy  to  imagine  with  what  tense 
interest  and  straining  eyes  the  first  bold  adventurers 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE       25 

sailed  up  this  narrow  and  beautiful  water-way  to  found 
the  city  that  has  become  the  second  port  of  Brazil. 
The  city  itself  stretches  by  the  river-side  around  the 
foot  of  a  great  green  hill,  disfigured  by  a  monstrous 
advertisement  announcing  to  adventurers  of  a  different 
kind  and  a  later  day  that  somebody's  biscuits  are  the 
best!  A  considerable  part  of  the  town  lies  on  land 
that  still  looks  suspiciously  swampy  and  used  to  be  an 
ideal  haunt  of  Yellow  Jack,  though  I  was  told  that  to- 
day it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  healthier  spot.  That 
may  be  so,  but  I  think  I  could  succeed  if  I  tried  very 
hard.  As  for  the  town  itself,  a  short  ramble  revealed 
one  of  the  deadest  and  most  uninteresting  cities  it  has 
been  my  lot  to  see,  and  I  gladly  returned  to  the  friendly 
shelter  of  the  ship  and  the  livelier  locality  of  the  quay- 
side, where  were  congregated  many  vessels  from  Brit- 
ish, American,  and  Continental  ports. 

Two  days  more  and  we  found  ourselves  at  anchor 
in  the  roads  outside  Montevideo,  which  presents  a 
most  engaging  picture  from  the  sea,  the  town  covering 
a  lumpy  tongue  of  land  that  juts  seaward  with  a  rocky 
short,  rambling  inland  in  many  directions  and  along  the 
bay,  which  culminates  in  the  conical  mass  known  as  the 
Cerro,  crowned  by  an  antique  fortress  and  a  modern 
light-house.  At  night,  when  the  myriad  electric  lamps 
are  lit,  the  light  house  on  the  Cerro  throwing  its  broad 
and  regular  beams  athwart  the  bay,  innumerable  red 
and  green  lights  blinking  on  the  buoys  in  the  harbour, 
much  flitting  of  motor  launches  and  brightly  illumin- 
ated liners  lying  at  anchor,  there  is  no  scene  I  know  that 
better  suggests  one's  juvenile  fancies  of  Fairyland. 

The  town  itself  delighted  us,  seen  in  generous  sun- 


26  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

shine,  with  refreshing  breezes  blowing  from  the  sea, 
which  at  first  sight,  as  we  pass  along  the  streets,  seems 
completely  to  enclose  it.  But  as  I  shall  have  some- 
thing to  say  of  my  later  stay  in  the  Uruguayan  capital, 
I  shall  not  occupy  myself  with  it  further  at  the  mo- 
ment. 

We  bade  good-bye  to  the  ship  that  had  been  our 
most  pleasant  abode  for  so  many  days  and  made  our 
first  acquaintance  with  things  Argentine  by  transferring 
ourselves  to  a  musty,  ill-managed  river-steamer,  on 
which  the  crudest  elements  of  courtesy  had  still  to  be 
acquired  by  officials  and  stewards,  who  were  all  too 
conscious  of  being  employed  by  a  firm  which  then 
monopolised  the  river  trade. 

Still,  although  we  realised  what  a  change  for  the 
worse  we  had  made  in  transhipping,  we  comforted 
ourselves  with  the  knowledge  that  to-morrow  we  should 
awaken  in  the  port  of  Buenos  Ayres;  in  that  genial 
land  of  sunshine  to  which  we  had  so  long  looked  for- 
ward with  eager  anticipation.  The  passage  up  the 
river  —  which,  seaward  of  Montevideo,  is  some  150 
miles  in  width,  narrowing  suddenly  to  sixty  opposite 
the  city,  and  to  the  eye  has  no  farther  shore,  so  that 
only  the  discolouration  of  the  water  distinguishes  river 
from  sea  —  was  made  in  the  roughest  weather  we  had 
experienced,  the  steamer  tossing  like  a  cork  and  its  pad- 
dle wheels  beating  the  waves  with  feeble  irregularity. 

It  was  an  early  autumn  morning  when  we  walked 
off  the  gangway  at  the  Darsena  Sud  to  endure  the  pain 
of  getting  our  belongings  through  the  customs,  an  op- 
eration apparently  regulated  by  the  shipping  authori- 
ties after  studying  all  the  worst  methods  in  vogue, 


OUR  VOYAGE  TO  THE  RIVER  PLATE       27 

selecting  the  worst  features  of  each,  and  combining 
these  into  a  system  that  is  the  acme  of  inefficiency. 
Moreover,  the  wind  bit  as  shrewdly  this  autumn  morn- 
ing as  on  a  midwinter's  day  in  New  York,  and,  believ- 
ing in  this  land  of  sunshine  with  a  simple  faith  that  had 
yet  to  suffer  rudest  shocks,  we  stood  there  an  hour  or 
more,  clothed  for  summer,  chattering  with  cold. 

But  we  were  actually  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and  soon  all 
the  marvels  of  that  wonderful  city,  that  "  Paris  of 
South  America, "  as  Argentines  who  have  never  been 
to  Europe  are  fond  of  describing  it,  were  to  reveal 
themselves  to  us  starveling  voyagers  who  knew  nothing 
better  than  the  Paris  of  France. 

Pantos  a  ver,  as  they  say  in  Buenos  Ayres. 


CHAPTER  III 

FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES 

OUR  ship's  doctor,  with  whom  I  had  passed  many 
agreeable  hours,  and  whose  efforts  to  practise  the  Span- 
ish speech  added  not  a  little  to  the  gaiety  of  our  voy- 
age, was  a  plain-spoken  young  man,  who  assured  me, 
when  he  heard  I  was  bound  for  Buenos  Ayres,  that  I 
was  going  to  "  the  rottenest  place  in  South  America." 
This  was  a  blow  that  struck  my  puffed-up  admiration 
of  the  place  under  the  belt.  I  had  read  in  the  papers 
before  leaving  London  that  no  fewer  than  fifteen  stow- 
aways from  Glasgow  had  reached  the  sunshine  city  of 
the  River  Plate  on  a  merchant  liner,  and  of  these  thir- 
teen were  discovered  on  the  same  vessel  when  it  was 
making  its  homeward  trip.  Now,  Glasgow  is  noted 
for  its  rain,  but  it  had  rained  in  such  an  appalling  man- 
ner all  the  time  the  vessel  was  discharging  and  loading 
at  Buenos  Ayres  that  these  sodden  thirteen  were  home- 
sick for  the  milder  rains  that  wash  their  native  haunts ! 
Doubtless,  if  the  truth  were  known,  the  other  two  had 
stowed  away  too  much  of  the  vile  liquid  sold  as  "  Es- 
kotsh  weeskee  "  in  Buenos  Ayres  to  be  able  to  stow 
themselves  away  a  second  time,  and  remained  to  swell 
the  ranks  of  the  Scotch  and  Irish  rascals  who  pester 
their  fellow-countrymen  for  alms  in  Florida  and  San 
Martin  —  the  streets  where  most  of  the  Britishers  may 
be  encountered. 

But  I  had  made  light  of  both  the  doctor's  dictum 

28 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES      29 

and  the  experience  of  the  Glasgow  stowaways.  No- 
body, nothing,  was  to  rob  me  of  my  ideal  city  on  the 
Silver  River! 

The  dirty  porter  who  conveyed  our  hand-bags  to  a 
dirtier  coche,  with  a  driver  in  the  full  regalia  of 
"  hobo  "  and  two  horses  that  ought  to  have  been  taken 
straightway  to  the  knacker's  yard,  did  his  best  to  rob 
me  of  five  pesos  (value  $2.10)  for  a  task  which  would 
have  been  well  paid  at  a  dime  or  a  quarter  and  the 
money  gratefully  received.  I  had  given  him  one  peso 
only  (42  cts.)  and  so  loudly  and  volubly  did  he  de- 
nounce me  for  a  "  mean,  dirty  German,"  that  I  gave 
him  one  more  for  peace,  and  the  sorry  nags  were 
whipped  up  and  we  drove  away  on  our  great  adven- 
ture. 

The  coach,  typical  of  many  I  was  to  see  and  not 
greatly  inferior  to  scores  it  was  to  be  my  unhappy  fate 
to  ride  in  for  many  months,  was  of  the  "  Victoria  " 
style,  so  pleasantly  familiar  to  the  frequenter  of  Paris; 
but  it  was  battered  and  tattered,  the  splash-boards 
broken,  the  mud-encrusted  wheels  repaired  with  odd 
spokes,  the  upholstering  faded  and  torn,  while  the 
sight  of  the  driver  in  his  greasy  rags  and  the  poor  worn 
horses  with  projecting  ribs,  broken  kneed,  and  raw 
flesh  showing  in  patches  along  their  scraggy  backs, 
mortified  me  that  in  such  a  manner  I  should  enter  the 
city  of  my  dreams.  Yet  the  description  may  stand  as 
representative  of  a  considerable  percentage  of  the 
things  then  plying  for  hire  in  Buenos  Ayres.  The  tat- 
tered ruffian  on  the  box-seat  lashed  the  moribund  nags 
so  unmercifully  that  I  had  to  insist  on  his  refraining, 
but  then,  and  often  afterwards,  it  was  clear  to  me 


30  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

that  only  by  thrashing  could  the  hapless  creatures  be 
made  to  go. 

And  what  a  journey!  The  roadway  reminded  me 
of  the  Chinese  saying,  that  in  China  the  roads  are 
good  for  ten  years  and  bad  for  ten  thousand.  With 
a  briefer  history  than  China's  it  may  be  said  of  Buenos 
Ayres  that  its  roads  are  good  for  ten  days  and  bad  for 
ten  years.  We  had  evidently  arrived  on  the  eleventh 
day!  Made  of  cobble  stones,  the  road  was  as  choppy 
as  the  river  on  a  windy  day,  the  tram  lines  now  project- 
ing half  a  foot  above  the  level,  now  dipping  into  baked- 
mud  hollows.  Everywhere  the  cracking  of  whips,  the 
clanging  of  bells,  the  shouting  of  drivers,  the  screeching 
of  ungreased  axles,  and  the  slipping  and  straining  of 
sweating  horses,  harnessed  in  threes  and  fours  to  un- 
couth and  overladen  wagons.  A  scene  of  brutal  ugli- 
ness and  sordid  brute  strife  that  filled  one's  mind  with 
horror.  We  had  plunged  into  the  hell  of  the  horse 
and  the  mule.  It  was  heart-rending  to  see  the  wretched 
creatures  cut  and  bruised,  with  open  sores  and  swollen 
fetlocks,  the  cruel  chain  traces  at  which  they  were 
straining  often  running  in  grooves  which  they  had  cut 
in  the  creature's  flesh  and  ever  the  relentless  whips  de- 
scending on  the  suffering  backs  with  stings  that  would 
have  touched  the  heart  of  any  man  of  feeling.  But  in 
all  that  strange,  noisy  medley  of  man  and  brute  there 
was  no  sign  of  feeling;  nothing  but  a  dull,  blear-eyed 
urge  forward.  Forward  to  what?  Ah,  he  were  a  bold 
man  who  answered  that.  But  what  I  know  and  assert 
is  that  in  a  hundred  thousand  miles  of  world-travel, 
and  observation,  I  have  never  witnessed  such  a  scene 
of  brute  suffering  as  I  did  that  autumn  morning  in  our 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES      31 

drive  from  the  Darsena  Sud,  past  the  Aduana,  by  the 
Paseo  Colon  and  the  Paseo  de  Julio  to  our  hotel. 

As  for  my  first  impressions  of  the  city,  I  comforted 
myself  with  the  reflection  that  the  neighbourhood  of 
docks  is  in  all  great  seaports  the  least  favourable  point 
of  view.  Everything  that  met  one's  eyes  was  mean,  or 
makeshift.  The  shops  along  the  Paseo  were  of  the 
lowest  class;  most  of  the  buildings  were  crumbling 
plaster  shanties.  The  people  trafficking  in  them  were 
the  dredgings  of  a  lower  life  than  one  sees  in  the 
region  of  the  Bowery  —  incomparably  more  villainous 
in  mien.  It  is  true  that  the  gardens,  which  adorn  the 
Paseo  Colon  and  the  Paseo  de  Julio  and  make  these 
appear  (in  a  photograph)  one  of  the  pleasantest  thor- 
oughfares in  all  the  world  (the  one  is  a  continuation 
of  the  other) ,  looked  beautiful,  yet  none  but  foul  Ital- 
ians and  Semitic  scum  were  to  be  seen  walking  there. 

It  would  be  all  right  when  we  got  into  the  city  itself, 
for  had  we  not  feasted  our  eyes  times  out  of  number 
on  alluring  pictures  of  the  imposing  buildings  of  this 
wonder  city  sent  broadcast  to  the  ends  of  earth  by  offi- 
cial propagandists?  A  huge  pink-painted  plaster 
building,  with  the  "  sham  "  flaking  off  in  places,  showed 
its  spacious  back  to  the  green  palm-dotted  gardens 
of  the  Paseo.  Was  it  —  could  it  be?  —  the  famous 
Casa  Rosada,  the  official  home  of  the  president?  It 
was.  A  little  cold  shiver  zig-zagged  down  my  back, 
and  I  ticked  off  in  my  mind  the  Casa  Rosada  as  one  of 
my  dream  pictures  of  Buenos  Ayres  that  had  not  come 
true. 

Presently,  up  a  side-street,  crowded  with  struggling 
wagons,  coaches  and  clamorous  tram-cars,  where  small 


32  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

buildings  were  being  torn  down  and  large  steel-frame 
ones  were  being  stuck  up,  we  came  to  our  hotel. 

The  roadway  in  front  was  so  narrow,  the  traffic  so 
insistent,  and  the  tramways  so  continuous,  that  the  mere 
act  of  stopping  our  coach  for  a  minute  blocked  the 
whole  ill-regulated,  restless  mass.  Nor  in  the  hotel 
did  we  find  peace.  It  was  in  the  hands  of  repairers, 
who,  as  we  afterwards  learned,  had  been  repairing  it 
for  three  years,  and  in  all  that  time  did  no  more  than 
could  have  been  achieved  in  New  York  inside  of  a 
month.  As  to  the  moderation  of  this  statement,  not 
only  can  I  vouch  from  a  careful  and  intimate  study  of 
the  work  of  those  blundering  incompetents  through 
eight  long  months  of  residence  there,  but  I  could  call 
a  cloud  of  witnesses,  whose  fate  it  was  to  live  through 
a  considerable  part  of  the  weary  years  of  alteration, 
as  the  discomforts  we  had  to  suffer  were  a  frequent 
topic  of  the  "  stayers  "  in  what,  with  all  its  faults,  was 
at  that  time  the  most  comfortable  and  reasonable  hotel 
in  Buenos  Ayres.  (I  hear  that  it  has  since  been  much 
improved  in  its  appointments.) 

In  the  small  and  crowded  lounge,  where  we  humbly 
waited  for  the  privilege  of  securing  accommodation, 
there  was  a  mingling  of  the  coming  and  the  parting 
guests.  The  former  one  could  recognise  at  a  glance 
by  their  creased  clothing,  the  latter  notably  chiefly  for 
their  bucolic  touches.  The  room  was  uninviting,  the 
shabby  wallpaper  in  pendulous  bulges,  mouldy  with 
damp,  every  item  worthy  only  of  a  small  country  hotel. 
The  gentleman  in  the  temporary  office,  who  carried  out 
his  duties  amidst  plasterers'  ladders  and  plumbers' 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES       33 

tools,  was  willing  to  concede  us  a  small  room  with  a 
bath  for  twenty-six  pesos  ($n)  per  day,  including 
"  board  "  but  excluding  certain  "  extras."  The  terms 
would  be  the  same  for  a  stay  of  one  night  or  for  a  stay 
of  one  year.  I  accepted  with  a  feeling  of  disappoint- 
ment, after  discovering  that  a  bedroom  and  a  sitting- 
room  of  the  most  ordinary  description  were  to  cost 
me  seventeen  dollars  per  day.  And  had  I  to  stay  again 
for  eight  whole  months  in  Buenos  Ayres  I  should  most 
willingly  return  to  the  same  conditions  which  at  first 
I  regarded  with  frank  contempt.  It  is  a  sadder  and  a 
wiser  man  that  writes  these  lines  than  he  who  stepped 
hopefully  into  the  best-recommended  hotel  in  Buenos 
Ayres  that  chill  morning  of  autumn. 

The  window  of  our  room  looked  upon  a  street  so 
narrow  that,  when  all  the  high  buildings  in  process  of 
erection  are  completed,  no  faint  ray  of  sun  will  ever 
enter  it.  At  the  corner  immediately  opposite  stood  one 
of  the  old  single-story  structures  of  the  colonial  type, 
which  in  the  centre  of  the  city  are  giving  way  to  the 
multi-storied  edifices  of  steel  and  concrete.  This  old 
shanty-like  building  was  a  centre  of  swarming  life  — 
Turks,  Greeks,  Swedes,  Syrians,  Italians,  in  short,  the 
off-scourings  of  all  nations,  were  to  be  our  neighbours, 
and  their  babel  of  tongues  sounded  from  the  little  drink- 
ing den  into  which  our  window  looked  as  though  the 
brawlers  were  in  the  hotel  itself.  A  nice  quiet  neigh- 
bourhood! Being  so  near  the  corner,  we  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  two  sets  of  tramways,  and  with  the  windows 
open  it  was  almost  necessary  to  use  a  megaphone  to 
make  one's  voice  heard  in  the  bedroom.  The  narrow 


34  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

streets  intensified  all  noises  to  an  extraordinary  degree. 
Bedlam  must  be  peaceful  compared  to  that  corner  — 
and  that  is  but  one  of  thousands  similar. 

"  We  must  clear  out  of  here  as  soon  as  possible," 
said  my  wife.  But  a  woman's  "  must  "  dwindles  into 
the  meekest  acquiescence  when  pitted  against  the 
"  must  "  of  Buenos  Ayres.  "  There  must  be  quieter 
places  in  the  centre  of  the  town,  away  from  these 
cramped  and  crowded  back  streets,"  she  opined.  Alas, 
there  are  no  back  streets  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Or  rather, 
there  are  few  other. 

As  soon  as  possible  I  went  forth  to  find  the  great 
open  avenues  where,  perchance,  I  could  move  at  my 
ease  and  enjoy  the  spectacle  of  the  myriad  life  of  the 
t   great  metropolis.     I  half  hoped  that  we  had  entered 
\  the  hotel  by  a  back  door  and  would  find  on  turning  the 
I  corner  that  it  had  a  noble  frontage  to  some  spacious 
I  street.     Vain  hope  of  a  "  Gringo  " —  as  the  native  dubs 
the  foreigner  in  South  America.     I  found  myself  in  a 
buzzing  thoroughfare,  where  there  were  no  tramways, 
but  where  coaches  and  motor  cars  were  dashing  along 
in  the  most  reckless  manner  and  with  quite  superfluous 
speed,  as  at  nearly  every  corner  they  had  to  pull  up 
suddenly  in  muddled  mobs  to  allow  the  streaming  traf- 
fic of  the  cross-streets  to  pass.     The  street  was  lined 
with  splendid  shops,  many  displaying  the  most  luxur- 
ious articles  of  furniture,  jewellery,  or  wearing  apparel, 
and    reminding    one    of    London's    Bond    Street.     It 
was  about  the  width  of  Wall  Street,  New  York  City. 
It  was  the  Calle  Florida,  the  very  core  and  pride  of 
Buenos  Ayres ! 

As  I  went  along,  stepping  off  the  narrow  side-walk 


.c   o 

II 

*l 

•-,   c 


8* 

M 

S.s 
8-£ 

|3t 
.1 


u  ~1 

LIB 

S'S  i 

Ml 


o 

S 

S 

C     3 

8  S 

o 

CJ 

^ 

•Si 

M 

U 

^ 

§  3 

U 

p'g 

S     -2  S  ,~ 

H     rt  g^ 

"E  >  ^ 

oJ  d   *= 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES       35 

every  few  yards  to  pass  any  two  people  inconsiderate 
enough  to  walk  side  by  side,  I  recalled  the  one  spark 
of  wit  I  had  heard  from  a  youth  of  the  "  Rube  "  va- 
riety who  had  been  a  shipmate  of  ours.  We  were  hav- 
ing dinner  on  board  the  river  steamer  and  had  reached 
the  fifth  or  sixth  course  of  the  weirdest  mixtures,  when 
he  said,  "  I  wonder  when  they  are  going  to  bring  us 
something  to  eat."  In  all  these  thoroughfares,  I 
wondered  when  I  was  going  to  find  a  street.  I  had 
heard  much  of  the  famous  Avenida.  That  at  least 
would  not  disappoint  me. 

The  sun  was  now  strong  and  the  temperature  must 
have  risen  fifteen  or  twenty  degrees  since  the  bitterly 
cold  morning.  Horses  were  sweating  and  giving  off 
an  offensive  odour  —  the  result,  I  fancy,  of  their  "  al- 
falfa "  feeding  —  and  were  covered  with  a  thick  white 
lather  along  the  parts  of  their  bodies  where  the  harness 
rubbed.  I,  too,  was  perspiring,  though  I  was  con- 
scious of  a  brisk  buoyancy  in  the  air,  as  I  continued 
southwards  towards  the  Avenida. 

Near  the  end  of  Florida,  I  noticed  among  the  throng 
an  acquaintance  of  mine  who  lives  a  few  streets  from 
me  and  whom  I  had  not  seen  at  home  for  more  than 
two  years.  He  was  only  on  a  short  visit  to  the  country, 
but  I  was  soon  to  find  that  New  Yorkers  and  London- 
ers who  have  business  anywhere  in  Argentina  and  may 
never  see  each  other  for  years  at  home  are  certain  to 
meet  in  Calle  Florida,  which  is  a  sort  of  funnel  through 
which  the  whole  stream  of  Argentine  traffic  must  pass. 

The  Avenida  at  last!  Except  where  the  narrow 
cross-streets  debouched  into  it,  every  inch  of  the  splen- 
did roadway  was  boarded  up  and  only  the  side-walks, 


36  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

crowded  with  jostling  humanity,  remained.  They  were 
then  making  the  underground  railway  from  the  Plaza 
Mayo  to  the  Estacion  Once.  In  this  state  for  many 
months  it  continued,  an  eyesore  and  a  source  of  illimit- 
able dust  and  dirt  to  all  the  centre  of  the  city.  No 
more  than  a  scrap  of  the  dome  of  Congress,  away  to 
the  west,  was  visible  above  the  earthworks  and  barri- 
cades, while  the  Plaza  Mayo,  with  the  historic  In- 
dependence Monument,  was  a  scene  of  shapeless 
confusion. 

I  ventured  along  Maipu,  where  the  ceaseless  rattle 
of  traffic  is  surely  more  disturbing  than  the  battle 
whence  it  takes  its  name  could  have  been.  Longing 
for  a  quiet  corner  to  rest,  I  regained  my  hotel,  where 
my  wife  reminded  me  of  a  certain  old  Scotswoman 
who  came  to  visit  her  daughter  in  London  and  was 
taken  to  Westminster  Abbey.  She  had  got  as  far  as 
the  choir  and  stood  looking  quietly  at  the  massy  col- 
umns and  noble  spring  of  the  arches,  the  iridescent 
beauty  of  the  windows,  before  she  spoke,  and  then  she 
said:  "  Weel,  do  ye  ken,  Jeenie,  I'm  awfu'  disap- 
pointed! " 

The  afternoon  Vas  unpleasantly  hot  and  enervating, 
but  the  evening  was  cool  with  a  fresh  and  pleasant 
breeze.  We  were  in  a  Latin  city  —  the  Paris  of  South 
America,  we  had  heard  it  called  —  we  were  both  lovers 
of  Paris,  my  wife  and  I;  so  we  sauntered  out  after 
dinner  to  take  our  ease  at  "  some  cafe,  somewhere,  in 
one  of  the  squares."  But  all  seemed  dead.  A  mere 
handful  of  stragglers  in  Florida;  in  the  Avenida  a  few 
soft-hatted  loungers,  who  stared  at  my  wife  with  rude 
animal  interest;  no  cafe  anywhere  in  any  square,  where 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES       37 

we  were  tempted  to  linger  for  a  moment.  So  a  coche 
rattled  us  back  as  quickly  as  possible  to  the  already 
friendly  hotel,  going  by  way  of  Esmeralda  and  Cor- 
rientes,  where  the  bright  exteriors  of  some  cinemas 
and  other  places  of  amusement  punctuated  the  dulness 
with  points  of  brightness. 

It  was  no  later  than  half-past  nine,  and  we  thought 
once  more  of  that  old  Scotswoman  in  Westminster 
Abbey. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PICTURES   OF   STREET   LIFE    IN   BUENOS  AYRES 

IT  is  a  reasonable  proposition  that  there  are  at  least 
as  many  ways  of  studying  a  strange  town  as  Mr.  Kip- 
ling allows  in  the  writing  of  tribal  lays  — "  and  every 
single  one  of  them  is  right."  I  claim  no  more  than  that 
for  my  own  particular  way. 

My  first  concern  is  to  gain  a  general  impression,  by 
wandering  the  streets  and  letting  the  spirit  of  the  place 
"  soak  "  into  me,  almost  unconsciously.  Later,  I  as- 
sume an  attitude  of  mind  more  critical  and  less  subjec- 
tive, becoming  an  active  observer,  open-eyed  for  every- 
thing that  is  strange  or  unusual;  finally  I  compare  all 
that  has  especially  appealed  to  my  mind  with  impres- 
sions long-since  etched  thereon  by  visits  to  other  cities. 

In  this  way  I  should  probably  describe  the  same 
town  somewhat  differently  in  the  varying  stages  of  my 
observation,  and  each  would  be  a  true  description  so 
far  as  I  was  able  to  convey  any  notion  at  all.  But 
after  passing  from  the  impressionary  stage  to  the  crit- 
ical and  eventually  to  that  of  the  comparative  observer, 
it  is  difficult  to  recover  the  first  impressions  once  these 
have  been  overlaid,  like  some  palimpsest  of  the  mem- 
ory, with  later  records.  In  the  preceding  chapter  I 
have  made  some  slight  attempt  at  this,  simply  because 
it  seemed  to  me  worth  trying  and  the  progress  of  my 
narrative  suggested  it.  A  book  of  first  impressions, 
however,  would  be  of  small  value,  no  matter  how  in- 

38 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  39 

teresting  it  might  prove,  and  I  deliberately  refrained 
throughout  my  stay  of  twelve  months  in  the  cities 
of  the  River  Plate  from  keeping  a  diary,  even 
from  making  notes,  except  on  two  subjects,  to  wit:  the 
price  of  commodities,  and  cruelty  to  animals,  which  I 
shall  discuss  in  special  chapters.  In  what  I  now  pro- 
ceed to  describe,  I  shall  be  guided  by  my  last  and  abid- 
ing impressions  of  all  that  I  saw  or  experienced,  and 
for  this  purpose  a  continuous  narrative  is  no  longer 
feasible. 

My  way,  then,  in  studying  a  foreign  city  is  first  to 
observe  the  panorama  of  its  street-life  so  closely  that 
I  can  ever  after  recall  it  in  minute  detail;  then  to  store 
away  finished  pictures  of  its  characteristic  buildings  in  i 
my  memory;  next  to  watch  narrowly  the  ways  of  the 
people,  as  expressed  in  all  forms  of  their  social  life 
and  business  activities,  gleaning  on  every  hand  from 
others  and  exchanging  opinions  even  with  persons  with 
whom  I  should  hate  to  agree.  In  such  wise,  or  as 
nearly  as  may  be,  I  shall  now  continue. 

Buenos  Ayres  in  its  planning  is  essentially  North 
American.  That  is  simplicity  itself,  but  out  of  sim- 
plicity has  come  confusion.  The  buildings  are  in 
"blocks,"  or  cuadras  (squares),  as  they  call  them  in 
South  America.  These  squares  measure  150  yards 
each  way.  Thus  a  plan  of  the  city  looks  like  a  mon- 
strous checker  board,  with  here  and  there  a  larger 
square,  where  two  or  more  cuadras  have  been  thrown 
into  one  to  admit  a  little  more  air  into  the  congested 
mass.  For  the  streets  are  narrow  beyond  belief.  The 
average  width  allows  three  coaches  to  stand  abreast, 
with  a  clearance  of  some  twelve  inches  between  them. 


40  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

A  walking  stick  and  a  half  gives  you  the  measure  of 
the  pavements.  These  are  the  standards  for  nearly  all 
the  thoroughfares  in  the  older  part  of  the  town,  and 
were  the  ample  ideals  of  the  Spanish  colonisers,  who 
required  no  more  than  single-story  houses  and  a  track 
between  for  their  horses  or  their  bullock  wagons. 
Thus,  in  great  measure,  Buenos  Ayres  is  an  anachron- 
ism, and  such  it  will  long  remain,  as  the  abnormal 
development  of  the  country  and  its  capital  city  —  the 
world's  most  prodigious  mushroom  —  has  made  this 
central  part  a  veritable  Eldorado  of  the  land-owner. 

What  served  a  century  ago  is  to-day  a  legacy  of  evil, 
and  these  narrow  colonial  streets  have  made  of  central 
Buenos  Ayres  an  inferno  of  human  strife  such  as  I 
hope  exists  nowhere  else  on  our  globe.  For  within 
these  myriad  squares  of  150  yards  there  is  no  entrance 
or  exit  for  wheeled  traffic,  and  it  is  a  pathetic  sight  to 
witness  the  unloading  of  goods  on  the  narrow  side- 
walks in  the  early  morning.  Let  the  North  Ameri- 
can reader  conceive  a  great  department  store,  situated 
in  a  street  no  wider  than  Wall  Street,  utterly  devoid 
of  any  back  way  for  the  entrance  of  a  cart,  with  a  pave- 
ment in  front  that  measures  a  walking-stick  and  a  half; 
and  let  him  picture  what  it  means  to  stock  that  great 
building  with  all  sorts  of  goods,  from  massive  suites 
of  furniture  to  tons  of  shoes  and  neckties !  If  his  im- 
agination will  stand  the  strain,  let  him  further  imagine 
what  would  happen  if  a  trolley  line  were  laid  within 
two  feet  of  the  sidewalk  in  front  of  the  door,  and  an 
endless  stream  of  cars  were  passing,  the  bodies  of 
them  flush  with  the  curbstone !  Yet  the  Wanamakers 
and  the  Marshall  Fields  of  Buenos  Ayres  have  to  stock 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  41 

their  premises  under  these  conditions.  In  this  city  of 
miracles,  there  is  none  more  extraordinary  than  the 
task  of  moving  goods  from  the  street  into  the  shop  and 
it  is  small  wonder  that  a  large  part  of  what  one  pays 
for  any  article  in  Buenos  Ayres  has  been  incurred  in 
getting  it  into  the  place  where  it  is  bought.  It  is  in- 
finitely easier  and  cheaper  to  carry  a  piano  from  Lon- 
don to  the  port  of  Buenos  Ayres  than  to  take  it  from 
the  ship  a  mile  away  to  the  shop  where  it  will  be  sold ! 

Often  have  I  marvelled  at  the  patience  and  energy 
of  the  Italian  peones,  struggling  with  enormous  cases 
of  merchandise  in  the  middle  of  the  street,  dodging 
them  across  the  trolley  lines,  while  a  dozen  drivers 
were  clanging  their  bells  for  them  to  clear  the  way. 
And  it  is  a  daily  incident  to  see  wardrobes,  suites  of 
furniture,  desks,  sofas,  mingled  in  the  gutters  with  the 
fretting  traffic,  in  front  of  the  warehouse  doors. 

In  almost  every  street  there  is  a  trolley  line  on  one 
side,  and  all  the  traffic  has  perforce  to  move  in  one 
direction, —  down  this  street,  up  the  next, —  for  which 
purpose  an  arrow  on  the  walls  indicates  the  direction. 
To  walk  at  ease  along  any  one  of  these  streets  in  the 
business  hours  is  impossible,  and  progress  afoot  is  only 
to  the  strong. 

In  such  streets  motor  traffic  is  a  folly,  yet  motor  cars 
abound.  It  is  a  safe  assertion  that  nine  out  of  ten  of 
them  are  used  for  no  purpose  other  than  ostentation. 
And  your  Argentine  nouveau  riche  will  have  none  of 
your  modest  15-20  horse-power  affairs.  His  mark  is 
40  horse-power,  and  the  biggest,  bulkiest,  most  cumber-  \ 
some  body  money  can  buy.  Thus,  at  certain  hours  of 
the  day  when  the  ladies  go  a-shopping,  many  of  the 


42  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

streets  are  stuffed  with  monstrous  cars,  which  have 
brought  their  owners  a  good  mile  or  perhaps  two,  and 
while  the  ladies  are  about  their  diversion  in  the  shops, 
the  chauffeurs  sit  making  filthy  remarks  about  every 
woman  who  passes,  and  ogling  the  girls.  These  motor 
men,  uniformed  expensively,  are  one  of  the  most  offen- 
sive elements  in  the  life  of  the  city.  Lazy,  pampered 
loafers  most  of  them;  they  deliberately  place  them- 
selves in  the  near  front  seat  of  the  car  while  waiting  for 
their  owners,  the  better  to  "  amuse  "  themselves. 

With  a  cautious  municipal  authority,  the  motor-car 
would  be  prohibited  in  the  centre  of  Buenos  Ayres.  It 
is  a  century  or  so  ahead  of  the  town.  In  streets  so 
narrow  the  horse  carriage  should  suffice,  and  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  the  horse-driven  traffic  can  move  as  quickly 
as  the  motor-driven,  owing  to  the  innumerable  stops 
that  have  to  be  made  in  even  the  shortest  journey.  In 
the  whole  vast  country  of  the  Argentine  there  are  not 
more  than  a  hundred  miles  of  really  good  motoring 
roads  and  automobile  owners  in  Buenos  Ayres  seldom 
venture  farther  afield  than  the  Tigre,  an  excursion  of 
some  sixteen  miles.  The  road  thither  is  the  best  in 
the  country.  It  would  rank  as  "  bad  "  in  the  guide- 
book of  any  American  or  European  touring  club  and 
it  is  the  ruin  of  many  a  car.  Yet  vulgar  ostentation 
insists  upon  the  automobile,  and  almost  every  notable 
firm  of  motor  car  makers  in  Europe  or  the  United 
States  is  catering  for  the  craze  with  branch  establish- 
ments in  or  around  the  Calle  Florida. 

The  papers  abound  in  accounts  of  motor  accidents 
and  one  seldom  passes  a  car  that  does  not  bear  some 
trace  of  a  collision,  many  of  the  drivers  being  as  reck- 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  43 

less  as  they  are  unskilled.  The  motor  car  is  indeed 
one  of  the  city's  problems  and  no  effort  is  being  made 
to  solve  it. 

If  the  streets  were  only  narrow,  matters  might  not 
be  so  bad.  But  they  are  also  villainously  paved  and 
continually  out  of  repair.  The  pavements  chiefly  con- 
sist of  slabs  of  rough-hewn  stone,  so  badly  laid  that 
one  is  constantly  tripping  over  their  inequalities. 
Moreover,  holes  are  merely  covered  by  a  piece  of  sheet 
iron  laid  loose  over  them,  and  in  Florida  alone  (it  is  the 
universal  custom  in  South  America  merely  to  give  the 
name  of  a  street,  without  adding  the  word  calle)  I 
have  noted  about  a  dozen  old  gas  pipes  left  protruding 
some  six  inches  above  the  pavement,  a  menace  to  all 
who  do  not  walk  with  their  eyes  to  the  ground.  As 
a  New  York  lady  visitor  said  to  me :  "  If  you  don't 
watch  where  you're  putting  your  feet,  you'll  fall  into 
a  hole,  or  trip  yourself,  and  if  you  do  look  out  for 
your  feet,  you'll  get  run  over!  " 

The  streets  are  laid  variously  with  asphalt,  wood, 
and  cobbles.  But  no  matter  what  material  is  used,  the 
result  is  equally  deplorable.  Thanks  to  the  excessively 
heavy  traffic,  borne  in  wagons  with  immense  narrow 
wheels,  an  asphalted  street  is  cut  up  into  ruts  in  a  few 
days  after  it  is  laid,  wooden  blocks  are  destroyed  with 
amazing  rapidity,  and  cobbles  are  daily  dislodged  in 
hundreds.  Thus  stones  innumerable  are  lying  in  the 
cobbled  streets,  to  the  danger  of  all  sorts  of  traffic;  in 
the  wood-paved  thoroughfares  there  are  ruts  several 
inches  deep  alongside  the  tram  lines,  and  the  asphalt 
roads  are  cracked  and  broken  as  though  some  wander- 
ing earthquake  had  passed  through  them  on  its  way 


44  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

from  Chili.     A  paseo  in  a  motor-car  is  an  agony  - 
there  is  no  "  rule  of  the  road,"  it  is  merely  "  devil  take 
the  hindmost  " —  a  drive  in  a  coach  is  little  better,  as 
the  motor-cars  make  the  progress  of  the  horse  vehicle 
a  hazard  of  terrors. 

In  such  narrow  and  congested  thoroughfares,  build- 
ing operations  are  carried  on  with  great  difficulty.  To 
me  it  was  a  source  of  constant  interest  and  admiration 
to  watch  those  in  progress.  And  as  there  is  no  street 
where  the  builders  are  not  busy,  I  had  ample  oppor- 
tunity. In  Florida,  where  a  huge  arcaded  building 
was  being  constructed  through  to  the  next  street,  San 
Martin,  the  work  of  digging  out  the  foundations  went 
on  all  day,  and  all  night  long  the  dirt  was  removed 
when  the  street  was  quiet.  The  scaffolding  fashioned 
for  the  purpose  was  the  most  ingenious  and  complicated 
I  have  ever  seen.  To  the  narrow  street  there  was  a 
barricade  of  corrugated  iron  (wood  is  too  expensive 
to  use  for- that  purpose)  and  above  towered  a  weird 
framework  of  timber,  with  "  tips  "  or  "  chutes  "  pro- 
jecting into  the  street.  Seen  from  behind  the  corru- 
gated iron,  it  was  a  magnificent  spectacle  of  industry. 
Hundreds  of  labourers  were  digging  down  into  the 
loamy  earth  some  thirty  or  forty  feet,  and  the  material 
taken  out  was  hoisted  up  by  a  lift  and  dumped  near 
the  tips,  so  that  through  the  night  great-wheeled 
wagons  came  along  in  fashionable  Florida  and  were 
loaded  up,  leaving  the  street  strewn  with  spilled  earth 
next  morning.  I  recall  the  night  when  some  of  this 
scaffolding  collapsed  and  precipitated  over  thirty  la- 
bourers into  the  excavations  fifty  or  sixty  feet  below. 
Such  accidents  are  very  common,  there  being  no  intel- 


EXTERIOR  AND  INTERIOR  OF  THE  "CASA  ROSADA." 

The  upper  illustration  shows  the  fa?ade  of  the  Government  House  towards  the 
gardens  of  the  Paseo  Colon  ;  the  lower,  the  vestibule  entering  from  the  main  door  in 
the  Plaza  de  Mavo. 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  45 

ligent  supervision  of  building  operations,  and  many 
labourers  are  sacrificed  every  year  to  the  carelessness 
of  their  employers  and  their  own  ignorance. 

But,  on  the  whole,  it  would  be  impossible  to  find 
more  inspiring  examples  of  human  energy  and  in- 
genuity in  the  face  of  extraordinary  difficulties  than  in 
the  erection  of  these  great  buildings.  To  watch  the 
low  colonial  house  fall  to  the  pick  and  shovel  in  a  few 
days,  the  crazy  scaffolding  quickly  reared  for  mining 
out  the  earth,  the  mighty  steel  uprights  and  girders 
arriving  on  huge  wagons,  each  drawn  by  three  or  four 
sweating  horses,  the  labourers  swinging  them  into  posi- 
tion, the  frame  of  the  ten-  or  twelve-story  building 
presently  disengaging  itself  where  so  recently  stood  the 
shanty,  the  bricklayers  clothing  it  with  their  handi- 
work, the  plasterers  finishing  its  exterior  with  grace- 
ful decorative  touches, —  all  this  was  to  me  a  source 
of  endless  interest. 

There  is  no  evidence  of  an  elementary  regard  for 
human  life  in  the  streaming  streets  of  riotous  traffic. 
Often  have  I  seen  buildings  in  course  of  demolition 
with  no  better  guard  against  falling  bricks  and  blocks 
of  cement  than  some  rough  pack-sheet  stretched  in 
front.  Sometimes  not  even  that  dubious  courtesy  is 
shown  to  the  passer-by,  and  the  demolishers  stand 
aloft  knocking  down  the  walls  inwards  without  the 
slightest  protection  against  the  fragments  that  rebound 
and  land  in  the  middle  of  the  street.  On  several  oc- 
casions I  have  escaped  by  half  a  yard  or  so  a  falling 
brick  that  might  well  have  closed  my  account.  Even 
when  blasting  with  dynamite  old  foundation  walls  of 
brick  and  mortar,  a  few  yards  from  the  pavement, 


46  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

nothing  will  be  done  for  the  safety  of  the  passer-by. 
The  casualty  columns  of  the  daily  papers  are  eloquent 
evidence  of  the  risks  the  ignorant  labourers  run  who 
are  employed  in  this  work  of  demolition. 

In  effecting  repairs  to  the  exteriors,  painting,  and  the 
like,  the  workers  are  confronted  with  many  difficulties, 
for  the  simple  expedient  of  erecting  ladders  as  in  our 
cities  is  denied  to  them.  A  ladder  would  block  the 
whole  pavement.  So  they  have  to  reverse  the  old 
order,  and  instead  of  placing  the  ladder  firmly  on  the 
ground  and  leaning  it  against  the  wall,  they  plant  the 
foot  of  it  in  the  angle  of  the  pavement  and  the  wall 
and  lean  it  away  from  the  building,  securing  the  upper 
and  projecting  end  by  ropes  to  a  window.  The  worker 
on  the  ladder  is  thus  between  the  ladder  and  the  wall. 
And  from  this  coign  of  vantage  he  drops  paint  or  wet 
plaster  on  the  passers-by  with  a  cheerfulness  and  im- 
partiality which  must  be  seen  to  be  duly  appreciated. 

Naturally  the  beautiful  detail  and  the  imposing  ap- 
pearance of  many  of  the  finest  buildings  in  the  city  are 
completely  lost  for  lack  of  space  to  see  them.  Hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  pounds  may  be  said  to  be  wasted 
in  this  way;  for  there  is  widespread  effort  to  render  the 
fagades  of  the  buildings  artistic,  the  cement  or  plaster 
with  which  they  are  covered  lending  itself  to  all  sorts 
of  decorative  treatment.  But  anything  over  two 
stories  in  height  is  above  the  line  of  sight  in  the  nar- 
row streets,  and  there  are  prodigalities  of  decoration 
in  the  third  and  fourth  and  higher  reaches  of  the  new 
buildings  which  have  never  been  noticed  by  anybody 
since  the  day  they  were  uncovered.  A  barn-like  struc- 
ture would  have  served  the  purpose  equally  and  given 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  47 

as  good  an  effect  —  except  in  a  photograph,  taken 
from  one  of  the  upper  stones  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  street.  Thus  one  has  a  curious  feeling  of  disap- 
pointment on  beholding  many  of  the  more  notable 
buildings  which  he  has  first  seen  in  photographs.  The 
famous  Jockey  Club,  for  example.  You  are  conscious 
that  if  you  could  get  a  hundred  yards  away  from  the 
front  of  it,  you  might  find  it  a  very  handsome  edifice. 
But  the  actual  effect  is  that  of  a  full-length  photograph 
out  of  focus,  in  which  the  boots  and  the  lower  part  of 
the  legs  dwarf  all  the  rest. 

I  recall  very  vividly  the  impression  of  my  first 
walks  in  those  strange  streets.  The  scarcity  of  women 
was  very  noticeable  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  day. 
Such  streets  as  Bartolome  Mitre,  Cangallo,  Sarmiento, 
Maipu,  and  San  Martin,  where  the  tide  of  business 
flows  strongest,  were  crowded  with  men;  the  odd 
women  who  passed  seemed  out  of  place.  But  later  in 
the  day,  women  and  children  may  be  seen  in  consider- 
able numbers  in  Florida  and  the  vicinity,  though  at  no 
time  are  they  ever  relatively  so  numerous  as  in  the 
streets  of  New  York.  And  what  never  ceased  to  irri- 
tate me  was  the  rudeness  with  which  the  passers-by 
stared  at  me  and  at  each  other.  I  was  prepared  for 
them  feasting  their  eyes  on  the  odd  women,  but  man 
scrutinising  man  was  new  to  me.  They  inspect  your 
neck-tie,  study  the  style  of  your  hat,  stare  at  your 
boots !  They  gape  at  you,  so  that  you  wonder  if  you 
have  forgotten  your  collar  or  if  your  suspenders  are 
hanging  down !  You  are  reassured,  however,  by  their 
gaping  at  each  other  for  no  obvious  reason.  It  is 
merely  a  vulgar  habit,  probably  acquired  by  the 


48  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

gapers  when  first  they  arrived  from  the  hill  villages  of 
Italy  or  the  desert  towns  of  Spain,  when  any  person 
decently  clothed  was  a  novelty  to  them. 

Some  of  the  half-breed  policemen  at  the  street  cor- 
ners, trying  to  "  control "  the  traffic,  are  a  source  of 
infinite  joy.  Armed  with  white  batons,  they  wave 
these  about  in  a  way  so  bewildering  that  it  is  a  puzzle 
to  know  whether  they  mean  to  hold  up  one  of  the 
streams  of  cross  traffic  or  invite  the  two  opposing  pro- 
cessions to  mutual  destruction.  On  the  whole,  al- 
though some  of  these  policemen,  shamefully  underpaid, 
indulge  in  a  little  robbery  to  keep  the  pot  boiling  — 
one,  whom  I  had  rather  grown  to  like,  mounted  guard 
one  Sunday  while  a  gang  of  thieves,  with  carts  and 
motor  cars,  plundered  the  newly-opened  branch  of 
Harrods'  London  Stores  in  Florida !  —  I  came  to  form 
a  very  favourable  opinion  of  them,  and  many  showed 
real  courtesy  and  good  sense  in  controlling  the  traffic, 
under  the -most  trying  circumstances,  as  every  cocker  o 
and  chauffeur  looks  upon  them  with  contempt  and  pays 
a  minimum  of  respect  to  their  authority. 

I  have  been  told  by  old  English  residents  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  who  are  prepared  to  perjure  their  souls  on  be- 
half of  the  city  that  has  given  them  the  opportunity  to 
grow  richer  than  they  were  ever  likely  to  become  at 
home,  that  "  there  are  no  poor  and  there  are  no  beg- 
gars in  Buenos  Ayres. "  Both  statements  are  untrue. 
There  are  lots  of  poor,  and  there  are  some  beggars. 
(Time  was  when  the  beggars  went  about  on  horse- 
back, to  the  confusion  of  the  old  proverb.)  It  could 
not  be  otherwise  in  a  vast  metropolis,  abnormally 
larger  than  the  country  behind  it  will  warrant  for  many 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  49 

years  to  come,  to  which  the  poor  of  the  poorest  coun- 
tries in  Europe,  Spain  and  Italy,  are  flocking  in  daily 
ship-loads.  No  poor  in  Buenos  Ayres,  forsooth! 
Thousands  of  poor  are  dumped  down  at  the  docks 
every  month,  and  poor  many  of  them  remain  forever 
—  poor  and  criminal  —  though  many  more,  with  en- 
ergy and  application,  escape  from  the  ranks  of  pov- 
erty, and  not  a  few  grow  rich. 

Poor  there  are  in  abundance,  and  very  much  in  evi- 
dence. Take  a  walk  along  the  Paseo  de  Julio  and  you 
will  see  as  many  of  the  tattered  army  of  Poverty  as  you 
will  encounter  in  London,  and  in  London  you  should 
see  exactly  five  times  as  many,  to  maintain  a  proportion 
relative  to  the  size  of  the  cities.  Beggars  are  less  no- 
ticeable, chiefly,  I  fancy,  because  there  is  no  room  for 
them  in  the  streets;  yet  I  have  often  been  asked  for 
alms  in  Florida,  while  looking  at  a  shop  window  —  the 
only  chance  the  beggar  has  of  practising  his  (more 
often  her)  profession,  as  to  stand  in  the  gutter  for 
more  than  a  minute  would  be  to  invite  a  violent  death. 
To  Britishers,  a  saddening  sight  is  presented  by  the 
gin-sodden  Irishmen  and  abandoned  Englishmen  who 
pester  their  fellow-countrymen  in  Florida  and  San 
Martin,  with  the  old  familiar  yarn  about  losing  their 
job  as  ship's  carpenter  and  the  certainty  of  getting  a 
new  start  if  they  can  only  raise  the  money  for  a  suit  of 
clothes.  Scores  of  times  have  I  had  to  turn  these 
British  rascals  away,  and  some  of  them  became  as  fa- 
miliar in  my  daily  walks  as  old  friends.  If  ever  one 
saw  a  face  that  had  been  made  repulsive  by  drink,  a 
nose  that  was  reddening  with  malt,  it  was  invariably 
the  guilty  possession  of  a  Britisher. 


50  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Mention  of  familiar  faces  reminds  me  of  one  of  the 
most  disagreeable  features  of  the  Buenos  Ayres  streets. 
In  this  matter  I  am  a  thoroughly  prejudiced  witness, 
so  I  must  explain  my  attitude.  To  me,  one  of  the 
abiding  charms  of  London  is  that  I  can  walk  its  dear 
familiar  streets  with  their  ever  changing  throngs, 
without  having  momently  to  raise  my  hat,  or  to  stop 
every  few  yards  to  endure  the  idle  chatter  of  some 
acquaintance.  I  love  London  for  itself  and  I  know 
where  to  find  my  friends  when  I  want  them.  To  have 
them  bumping  up  against  me  at  every  corner  would 
come  between  me  and  my  London.  It  would  destroy 
completely  that  feeling  of  immensity,  that  sobering 
sense  of  the  greatness  of  humanity,  which  London  im- 
poses on  the  reflective  mind.  But  in  Buenos  Ayres,  if 
you  have  noticed  a  man  in  a  railway  train,  if  you  have 
spoken  to  a  passenger  on  the  river  boat,  if  you  have 
been  introduced  to  somebody  at  a  Belgrano  dinner- 
party, you  will  surely  see  them  all  in  Florida  next  day. 
This  parochial  condition  is  the  result  of  the  central 
part  of  the  town  being  confined  to  a  few  narrow  streets. 
In  all  Latin  countries  there  is  also  a  sheep-like  flocking 
to  certain  beaten  tracks,  as  in  Paris  every  boulevardier 
and  almost  any  visitor  is  sure  to  be  "  spotted  "  if  you 
but  sit  long  enough  at  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix.  Although 
the  admirably  planned  and  imposing  Avenida  de  Mayo 
was  opened  some  twenty  years  ago  to  give  Buenos 
Ayres  a  new  heart,  it  is  still  comparatively  unpopular, 
while  the  congested  Calle  Florida  is  more  congested 
than  ever. 

Other  faces  that  grow  familiar  to  one  in  the  streets 
are  those  of  the  porters  or  chang adores.  Brawny 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  51 

Italians  or  Gallegos  usually,  these  lazy  and  exigent 
vendors  of  unskilled  labour  stand  in  braces  at  the  cor- 
ners of  many  of  the  central  streets,  a  nuisance  to  pass- 
ers-by. They  are  armed  with  a  rope  or  with  a  large 
piece  of  packing  cloth  folded  and  laid  across  their  left 
shoulder.  This  is  at  once  their  instrument  and  their 
insignia.  If  you  want  anything  removed,  you  send 
out  for  one  of  these  gentry,  and  if  he  is  feeling  strong 
enough  he  may  condescend  to  oblige  you  for  a  fee 
which  would  command  a  visit  from  a  skilled  medical 
man  in  New  York.  They  will  fuss  and  blow  over  a 
little  job  which  should  be  no  more  than  a  mere  incident 
in  the  day's  work.  Once  I  was  so  fortunate  as  to  get 
one  to  carry  a  box  of  books  for  me  up  three  flights  of 
stairs,  for  a  trifle  —  five  pesos,  or  two  dollars  — 
which  he  pocketed  without  a  word  of  thanks.  They 
must  be  prosperous  villains  these  street  porters  and  the 
malorganisation  of  labour  gives  them  their  oppor- 
tunity, as  nobody  sending  you  any  moderately  heavy 
article  will  undertake  to  do  more  than  leave  it  at  the 
foot  of  the  stairs.  If  you  happen  to  require  it  three 
stairs  up  that  is  entirely  your  affair. 

Turning  from  the  people  in  the  streets  to  the  shops, 
one  is  struck  by  the  extraordinary  preponderance  of 
chemists  and  druggists.  Almost  every  other  corner- 
shop  is  a  / 'armada.  And  it  is  pretty  certain  to  be  a 
f armada  inglesa  or  francesa,  or  alemana,  or  ilaliana 
—  rarely  espanola!  But  all  the  same  the  "  English 
chemist  "  may  be  an  enterprising  Argentine  who  knows 
no  more  than  "  zank  you  ver'  mooch,"  which  he  will 
utter  with  a  self-satisfied  smile  after  you  have  con- 
ducted all  your  business  in  his  own  language.  And  he 


52  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ought  to  "  zank  you  "  in  half  a  dozen  languages  at 
once  for  what  you  have  to  give  him  in  exchange  for 
what  you  get.  The  farmacia  is  to  Buenos  Ayres,  and 
indeed  to  the  whole  of  the  Argentine  and  Uruguay, 
what  the  public-house  is  to  England  —  the  "  corner 
shop."  In  the  country  towns  it  actually  takes  the  place 
of  the  village  inn  and  is  the  rendezvous  of  the  local 
gossips.  Magnificent  establishments  are  these  farma- 
cias.  New  York  has  nothing  to  show  in  the  line  of 
artistic  shops  that  will  excel  the  best  of  them.  In- 
deed, in  no  other  great  city  have  I  seen  drug-stores 
to  be  compared  with  certain  of  these  in  respect  to  the 
grandeur  of  their  carved  wood  adornments  and  the 
completeness  of  their  equipment.  Their  numerous 
assistants  usually  wear  long  white  linen  coats,  after  the 
style  of  hospital  doctors,  which  give  them  a  pleasant 
air  of  cleanliness  they  might  otherwise  lack. 

With  a  drugshop  at  every  corner,  buzzing  with  cus- 
tomers, the  unconscious  liar  who  can  speak  no  ill  of 
Buenos  Ayres  will  blandly  tell  you  it  is  "  the  healthiest 
city  in  the  world."  As  a  matter  of  undiluted  fact,  it 
is  a  paradise  of  the  doctor  and  the  patent-pill-man, 
largely  due  to  its  curiously  trying  climate.  One  often 
comments  on  the  abundant  evidence  of  the  patent 
medicine  seller  in  the  United  States  —  in  the  adver- 
tising columns  of  the  newspapers,  on  the  hoardings  in 
the  streets  —  but  nothing  we  have  amongst  us  in  that 
respect  equals  the  insistence  with  which  you  are  re- 
minded of  your  aching  stomach  at  every  turn  in 
Buenos  Ayres  —  if,  by  lucky  chance,  your  stomach 
itself  has  forgotten  for  a  moment  to  remind  you  of  its 
troubles. 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  53 

Next  in  proportion  to  those  offering  the  Argentina 
a  myriad  cures  for  his  estomago,  come  the  shops  that 
are  dedicated  to  cleaning  his  boots.  Indeed,  one  might 
reasonably  suppose  this  to  be  the  national  industry. 
The  abundant  energy  devoted  to  this  lowly  calling  if 
turned  to  other  channels  might  go  far  to  fortify  the 
republic.  Even  in  the  Calle  Florida,  where  land  val- 
ues and  shop-rents  rival  the  highest  known  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  one  finds  certain  enviable  positions  occupied  by 
nothing  better  than  salones  de  lustrar,  and  in  all  the 
central  streets  such  establishments  —  often  employing 
upwards  of  a  dozen  men  —  abound.  Nay,  go  where 
you  will,  even  to  the  outer  suburbs,  you  will  never  fail 
to  find  a  druggist's  or  a  bootblack's  shop. 

A  real  Argentine  citizen  must  have  his  boots  polished 
several  times  a  day,  else  these  multitudinous  slaves  of 
the  blacking  brush  could  not  be  kept  so  busy.  The 
saloons  are  sometimes  fitted  up  in  quite  a  luxurious 
manner,  with  long  platforms  on  which  are  raised 
padded  chairs  with  high  foot  rests  in  front,  and 
while  you  sit  in  this  elevated  position  the  polisher  per- 
forms the  most  elaborate  operation  on  your  shoes, 
using  a  bewildering  variety  of  pastes,  brushes,  and 
cloths.  When  you  think  he  has  done,  he  begins  all 
over  again  and  not  until  he  has  completed  what  must 
be  the  tenth  or  eleventh  stage  of  the  operation,  which 
consists  in  taking  a  piece  of  silk  from  his  trouser 
pocket,  where  it  has  been  lodged  to  absorb  the  warmth 
of  his  body,  and  working  it  with  furious  friction  over 
your  shoes,  are  you  free  to  step  down.  Meanwhile 
you  have  been  listening  to  Caruso  and  Tetrazzini  on  the 
gramophone, —  I  have  even  heard  a  customer  insist 


54  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

on  a  tune  being  stopped  and  his  favourite  substituted ! 
—  so  that  when  you  step  out  with  shining  feet  you  feel 
the  threepence  or  fourpence  you  have  paid  has  been 
well-earned.  But  you  won't  have  gone  twenty  paces 
along  the  street  until  a  bawling  door-man,  shouting 
"  Se  lustra!  se  lustra!  "  will  point  to  your  feet  and  in- 
vite you  into  his  shop,  with  "  Shine,  sir?  " 

Many  of  these  boot-blacks  run  their  prosperous  busi- 
ness in  conjunction  with  an  agency  for  lottery  tickets 
and  most  of  them  sell  cigars  and  cigarettes  as  "  side- 
lines." The  shops  dedicated  to  the  sale  of  lottery 
tickets  present  at  first  a  very  unusual  sight  to  the  vis- 
itor. Their  name  is  legion.  All  the  numerous  money- 
changers deal  in  these  tickets,  which  are  spread  out  in 
their  windows  so  that  the  passer-by  may  scrutinise  the 
numbers  and  see  if  his  lucky  combination  is  among  them. 
Many  tobacconists  also  sell  them,  and  there  are  nu- 
merous street-hawkers  to  offer  you  the  chance  of  scores 
of  thousands  of  dollars  for  fifty  cents  or  so  —  a  thirty- 
thousand-to-one  chance.  It  is  a  study  in  Hope  to 
watch  a  poor  workman  outside  the  window  of  one  of 
these  lottery-ticket  vendor's  pointing  out  the  particular 
ticket  which  he  trusts  may  bring  him  a  sudden  fortune 
and  take  him  home  to  Italy  or  Spain  by  the  next 
steamer  —  the  ultimate  hope  that  flickers  in  all  their 
breasts. 

There  is  much  parade  of  luxury  in  the  barbers'  shops, 
which  form  a  good  third,  in  point  of  number,  to  the 
druggists  and  boot-blacks.  Mirrors  gleam  along  the 
walls  and  the  basins  and  pipes  for  performing  the 
mysteries  of  an  Argentine's  "  shave  and  haircut  "  are 
many  and  glittering.  The  assistants  seem  almost  as 


STREET  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES  55 

numerous  as  the  customers  at  any  hour  of  the  day  and 
all  wear  the  white  jackets  that  cover  a  multitude  of 
sins.  A  simple  haircut  in  an  establishment  of  just  mid- 
dling style  —  regular,  no  mas  —  costs  you  eighty 
centavos,  leaving  twenty  out  of  the  peso  for  the  artist 
who  has  treated  you.  Forty-two  cents  for  a  mere 
haircut  is  moderately  "stiff";  but  have  a  shampoo, 
a  singe  and  a  shave  at  the  same  time,  and  you  will  find 
that,  like  Sampson,  your  strength  has  oozed  away  with 
your  hair,  when  the  barber  names  his  price ! 


CHAPTER  V 

MORE   SCENES   FROM  THE   STREETS   OF  BUENOS 
AYRES 

WHAT  fascinated  me  most  in  the  streets  of  this  motley 
town  were  the  bookshops.  Who  says  there  is  no  cul- 
ture in  Buenos  Ayres  has  to  reckon  with  the  evidence 
of  these,  for  London  itself  has  no  more  than  you  might 
count  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand  that  excel  the  librerias 
of  the  Argentine  capital.  Many  pleasant  hours  have 
I  passed  inspecting  their  wonderfully  varied  stocks  of 
books  from  all  the  countries  of  Europe  where  the  art 
of  printing  flourishes,  as  well  as  from  North  and  South 
America.  In  proportion  to  their  populations,  Buenos 
Ayres  excels  New  York  in  the  number  and  character  of 
its  bookshops. 

m  It  was  very  encouraging  to  a  literary  worker  to  note 
how  every  country  has  sent  of  its  best  (though  Spain 
also  of  its  worst)  to  keep  alive  the  taste  for  letters 
in  those  whom  the  eternal  quest  for  the  elusive  dollar 
has  taken  to  far-away  Argentina.  There  are  many 
German  bookshops,  stocked  with  wonderful  collections 
of  the  classic  literature  of  the  Fatherland  and  the  latest 
works  of  its  indefatigable  authors  of  to-day  in  every 
branch  of  thought  and  activity.  Several  admirable 
French  shops  there  are  of  which  the  same  may  be  said; 
a  few  Italians  —  extremely  few  in  proportion  to  the 
vast  Italian  population  —  and  several  well-known 
British  shops,  where  cheap  English  and  American  fic- 

56 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  57 

tion  unfortunately  outnumbers  the  books  of  serious 
value,  though  practically  no  new  book  of  real  note  that 
saw  the  light  in  England  or  North  America  did  not 
have  at  least  a  brief  showing  on  the  shelves  of  the 
British  bookshops  during  my  stay.  There  is  even  a 
bookshop  where  the  strange  literary  products  of  the 
Turk  and  the  Syrian  are  sold  to  the  oriental  community. 

But  the  native  bookshops  have  nothing  to  learn  from 
the  foreigners,  unless  it  be  a  better  taste  in  displaying 
their  wares,  which  are  usually  thrown  into  the  window 
with  all  the  abandon  of  a  country  store.  In  point  of 
variety,  they  are  as  richly  stocked  as  any  of  their  col- 
leagues overseas,  and  it  is  clear  from  the  most  casual 
examination  of  their  shelves  that  all  the  principal 
French  and  German  publishers  are  vicing  with  each 
other  in  catering  for  this  rich  and  ready  market  of 
golden  South  America.  I  could  fill  pages  with  lists 
of  "  libraries  "  which  are  being  produced  specially  for 
Latin  America  (but  chiefly  for  Buenos  Ayres)  by  fa- 
mous Continental  houses,  who  publish  Spanish  transla- 
tions of  all  their  important  new  books,  as  well  as  of  a 
bewildering  number  of  old  books  that  first  found 
popularity  in  French  or  German.  Spanish  publishers 
lack  enterprise,  hence  Buenos  Ayres,  where  printing 
is  excessively  costly  and  is  used  almost  exclusively  for 
business  propaganda,  has  to  get  its  most  worthy  Span- 
ish books  by  way  of  France  or  Germany. 

I  have  said  Spain  also  sends  of  its  worst.  Most  of 
the  trash  comes  from  Barcelona  and  Madrid  houses. 
It  consists  chiefly  of  atrocious  translations  of  English 
and  American  detective  tales  of  the  crudest  "  penny 
blood  "  variety,  badly  printed,  and  stitched  within  a 


58  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

gaudy  and  often  well-done  coloured  wrapper,  with  some 
preposterously  sensational  picture  thereon.  These  are 
sold,  not  at  a  penny,  but  at  fourpence  (twenty 
centavos)  and  are  read  by  young  and  old  alike.  There 
are  many  shops  that  show  nothing  in  their  windows 
but  this  gutter  literature,  while  the  kiosks  on  the 
Avenida  —  pale  and  shabby  ghosts  of  the  delightful 
Paris  kiosks  these !  —  are  stocked  with  them,  and  also 
with  translations  of  the  pornographic  French  books 
which  the  shameless  shopmen  of  the  Palais  Royal  dis- 
play for  the  concupiscent  foreigner. 

Of  old  bookshops,  alas,  there  are  none.  To  the 
literary  man,  a  city  without  its  dusty  haunts  of  the 
bookworm  lacks  something  that  all  the  loads  of  "  latest 
books  "  cannot  quite  replace.  Old  books  there  are  to 
be  found  in  the  general  bookshops,  and  they  are  usually 
offered  at  prices  so  excessive  that  when  I  set  about  the 
formation  of  a  library  of  South  American  works,  I  was 
eventually  forced  to  discontinue  buying  any  but  the 
most  essential,  as  they  are  to  be  picked  up  in  Paris  at  a 
fifth  the  price  and  with  much  less  searching.  I  also 
found  that  I  could  secure  in  London  more  and  better 
photographs  of  Buenos  Ayres  than  in  the  city  itself, 
and  at  less  cost !  One  day,  requiring  urgently  a  photo 
of  a  certain  aspect  of  the  statue  of  San  Martin,  I  had 
all  the  likely  shops  and  photographers  searched  in  vain, 
yet  in  London  I  could  have  got  it  immediately. 

The  English  booksellers  (who,  of  course,  also  cater 
for  the  small  North  American  "colony")  have  the 
habit  of  hanging  out  a  notice  when  the  English  or 
North  American  mail  has  come  to  hand  with  its  load 
of  new  books  and  the  latest  periodicals.  And  once  a 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  59 

week  the  exiles  from  Old  England  or  from  the  United 
States  must  feel  a  quickening  of  the  pulse  when  they 
see  the  announcement  in  good  bold  letters  "  MAIL 
DAY "  or  "  MAIL  ARRIVED  "  at  the  doors  of 
these  thriving  bookshops  in  the  Calle  Cangallo.  But 
perhaps  a  time  may  come  to  the  exile  when  his  pulse  is 
so  scant  of  home-fed  blood  that  he  notes  these  signs 
with  a  dim  unseeing  eye  and  feels  no  flush  of  the  old 
love  for  his  native  land  arise  in  him. 

If  horseshoes  brought  luck,  every  exile  might  be  a 
millionaire,  for  nowhere  have  I  seen  so  many  cast 
shoes  in  the  streets.  You  could  wager  on  filling  a  cart 
with  them  in  one  day!  The  workmanship  of  the 
smiths  is  evidently  so  crude  or  so  little  care  is  taken  of 
the  horses  that  their  shoes  are  allowed  to  loosen  and 
fall  off  without  any  serious  attempt  to  preserve  them. 
Whatever  the  reason,  they  are  in  all  the  streets  like 
"  common  objects  of  the  seashore."  But  the  electric 
bulb  is  to  Buenos  Ayres  as  the  seaweed  or  the  limpet 
to  a  rocky  shore.  Except  along  Broadway,  no  New 
Yorker  ever  looks  on  such  prodigality  of  electric 
lamps.  All  the  public  buildings  are  permanently  out- 
lined with  them,  so  often  have  they  to  use  them  on 
anniversaries  or  centenaries;  for  the  Argentine  dearly 
loves  to  celebrate  the  centenary  of  any  old  forgotten 
"  battle  "  in  his  glorious  history  and  the  anniversaries 
of  all  the  "  epoch-making "  events  and  great  men's 
birthdays,  by  illuminating  his  public  buildings  and  get- 
ting some  great  living  Argentine  to  declaim  a  type- 
written speech  to  an  assembly  of  distinguidos.  Even 
the  Cathedral  is  garlanded  with  rows  of  electric  bulbs, 
so  that  it  may  take  its  part  with  the  public  buildings 


60  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

and  the  retail  shops  in  these  extremely  frequent  elec- 
trical celebrations.  No  wonder  the  electricians  love 
Buenos  Ayres !  And  very  beautiful  is  the  city  with  its 
millions  of  little  coloured  lamps  aglow.  I  saw  it  many 
times  thus  in  eight  months ;  but  could  have  wished  for 
some  novelty  after  the  fifth  or  sixth  time. 

While  electricity  is  comparatively  cheap,  and  the 
supply  of  glass  lamps  evidently  inexhaustible,  the  plate- 
glass  used  for  lighting  underground  warehouses  from 
the  sidewalk  is  evidently  at  a  premium,  as  I  noticed 
that  whenever  one  of  these  pavement  lights  was  broken 
it  was  not  replaced  by  a  piece  of  thick  glass,  but  by 
wood  covered  with  a  layer  of  cement! 

Having  thus  far  dealt  with  the  streets  of  Buenos 
Ayres  in  general  terms,  let  me  now  glance  at  certain 
of  the  more  famous  thoroughfares  in  particular. 
Florida  must  naturally  come  first,  for  Florida  is  a 
microcosm  of  Buenos  Ayres.  It  is  a  tramless  street, 
in  so  far  as  the  electrlcos  only  cross  it  at  every  150 
yards.  It  is,  moreover,  a  "  two  ways  "  street,  traffic 
being  allowed  to  pass  along  it  in  both  directions.  It  is, 
as  I  have  already  indicated,  an  extremely  narrow  street. 
But  it  is  the  great  highway  of  the  city;  its  peculiar  pride 
and  joy.  There  throbs  the  great  heart  of  el  gran 
pueblo  Argentina.  On  a  dry  day  the  motors  churn 
up  the  dust  and  line  the  broken  asphalt  roadway  with 
long  tracks  of  oil,  on  which  the  horses  "  slither  "  and 
fall.  On  a  moist  day  the  dust  is  converted  into  a 
pasty  coating,  which  makes  progress  on  sidewalk  or 
roadway  a  peril  to  quadrupeds  and  bipeds  alike.  On 
a  really  wet  day  —  and  often  it  rains  in  torrents  for 
days  on  end  —  the  windows  of  all  the  shops  become 


t/D 
B 

'-5 


M      V 

H     S 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  61 

obscured  with  mud  and  pedestrians  are  bespattered 
from  head  to  heels.  The  habit  of  wearing  waterproofs 
with  hoods,  which  they  flap  over  their  hats,  gives  a 
curious  aspect  to  the  men  on  wet  days.  I  had  been 
told  in  London  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  was  spotted  in 
Buenos  Ayres  by  his  umbrella.  My  experience  was 
that  the  first  things  a  newcomer  bought  in  the  month 
of  May  or  June  were  a  waterproof  and  an  umbrella, 
and  it  was  comic  to  see  the  poor  Italian  and  Spanish 
immigrants  disembarking,  each  clutching  a  real  old 
"  gamp,"  for  which  he  was  to  find  abundant  use.  The 
caches,  being  built  for  fair  weather,  offer  little  protec- 
tion when  it  rains,  a  crude  apron  of  leather  being 
stretched  in  front  of  the  "  fare,"  but  leaving  his  head 
and  shoulders  exposed  to  the  deluge.  Yet  one  is  lucky 
indeed  to  secure  so  much  protection  on  a  rainy  night, 
and  often  have  I  had  to  walk  to  my  quarters  in  the 
drenching  rain  after  shivering  for  half  an  hour  in  a 
doorway  in  the  vain  hope  of  getting  some  condescend- 
ing cochero  to  accept  my  patronage.  At  other  times, 
when  I  have  secured  a  coach,  I  have  regretted  I  have 
not  boldly  footed  it  in  the  rain,  as  there  would  be  a 
painful  interlude  on  the  journey  while  the  driver  strug- 
gled to  raise  up  his  fallen  steeds.  They  tumble  about 
on  the  slippery  streets  like  beginners  in  a  skating  rink. 
But  let  us  look  at  Florida  when  the  sun  is  shining. 
Its  shops  are  full  of  interest  to  the  curious.  The 
jewellers'  are  especially  numerous,  and  vie  with  the 
best  in  London  or  Paris.  And  their  contents  are  of  the 
most  beautiful,  for  the  Argentines  have  taste  in 
jewellery,  even  though  they  are  inclined  to  display  it 
with  almost  barbaric  opulence.  The  furniture  shops 


62  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

are  equally  prodigal  in  beautiful  and  unique  wares,  with 
perhaps  too  marked  a  tendency  to  the  art  nouveau, 
which  has  not  yet  grown  old  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Com- 
fortable chairs,  luxurious  lounges,  no  —  their  prefer- 
ence is  for  "  style "  rather  than  comfort.  The 
milliners  and  modistas  display  the  most  tempting 
hats  —  I  have  seen  one  ticketed  at  500  pesos  —  and 
dresses  which  are  the  last  word  in  Parisian  ingenuity. 
They  have  also  a  childish  delight  in  grouping  life-sized 
and  very  lifelike  female  figures  arranged  in  these  vani- 
ties in  their  windows.  A  waxen  lady  displaying  her 
startling  corsets  and  snowy  underwear  has  a  peculiar 
fascination  not  only  for  the  women,  but  even  for  the 
men.  One  evening  I  overheard  a  little  ragged  urchin, 
who  was  standing  before  such  a  revelation,  pressing  his 
hands  across  his  heart,  like  Caruso  in  a  love  scene, 
exclaiming  to  the  wax  idol  of  his  adoration,  "  Ah,  mi 
querida  senorita! "  They  begin  young  in  Buenos 
Ayres ! 

Florida  is  so  much  a  Vanity  Fair  that  the  shops  de- 
voted to  the  more  sober  necessities  of  life  seem  out  of 
place.  Some  of  these  still  present  a  "  Wild  West " 
aspect  in  the  motley  assortment  of  their  wares,  cooking 
ranges,  oil  stoves,  baths,  cork-screws,  infants'  foods, 
boots,  bedsteads,  and  travelling  trunks  being  mingled 
together  in  pleasing  disorder.  But  such  establishments 
are  gradually  being  elbowed  out  by  the  pompous  jewel- 
ler, the  pianoforte-seller,  whose  chief  business  is  in 
pianolas  and  musical  boxes  —  crowds  will  stand  around 
a  shop  door  to  listen  to  a  musical  box  at  work  or  an 
automatic  organ,  in  the  evening  when  the  street  has 
been  closed  to  wheeled  traffic  —  the  furrier,  the  high- 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  63 

class  stationer,  the  modista,  the  chemist,  and  the  op- 
tician. Nowhere  will  you  find  such  opticians.  It  may 
be  that  the  syphilitic  condition  of  the  South  American 
blood  is  responsible  for  the  myopia  of  the  Argentines, 
or  it  may  be  no  more  than  a  fashion,  like  the  monocle 
with  a  certain  type  of  Englishman;  but  the  use  of 
glasses  is  widespread.  There  is  one  establishment  in 
Florida  which  is  a  veritable  palace  of  optical  appliances, 
employing  many  scores  of  assistants.  A  considerable 
part  of  this  business  is  also  associated  with  land-sur- 
veying and  the  most  expensive  instruments  of  that  sci- 
ence may  be  seen  for  sale  in  many  shop  windows  in 
Florida.  A  peculiarity  of  Buenos  Ayres  (and  Mon- 
tevideo also)  is  the  public  display  of  surgical  ap- 
pliances. Brilliantly  lighted  windows  present  you  with 
the  latest  things  in  operating  tables,  glass  service  stands 
for  the  instruments,  and  all  sorts  of  uncanny  inventions 
for  cutting  you  up. 

The  craftsmen  of  Florence  send  much  of  their  mar- 
ble handiwork  to  Florida,  and  some  of  the  art  shops 
are  stocked  with  beautiful  statues  and  bronzes,  while 
every  variety  of  gorgeous  inkstands  may  be  seen  in 
them.  The  inkstand  is  an  important  item  of  the  chic 
Argentine  home.  But  the  taste  for  graphic  art  is  still 
undeveloped,  and  the  pictures  offered  for  sale  compare 
very  unfavourably  with  the  sculptures.  I  recall  in 
particular  a  hideous  daub,  which  was  alleged  to  rep- 
resent two  or  three  members  of  a  certain  familia  dis~ 
tmguida  (any  family  that  can  pay  its  way  and  afford 
a  seat  at  the  Opera  is  so  described),  being  the  centre 
of  admiration  in  a  Florida  shop  window  for  some  days, 
while  the  newspapers  gave  reproductions  of  it.  In 


64  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

London  or  Paris  no  art-dealer  would  have  allowed  it  to 
be  seen  on  his  premises. 

As  I  have  already  indicated,  Florida  has  every  day 
a  brief  surcease  from  the  battle  of  motors  and  coaches. 
From  four  o'clock  until  seven  no  vehicles  are  allowed 
to  pass  along  it,  and  only  at  the  crossings  is  there  any 
traffic.  These  are  the  hours  of  the  evening  paseo. 
Ladies  and  children  are  now  at  liberty  to  saunter  along 
the  pavements  or  in  the  roadway,  while  the  gilded 
youth  of  the  town  struts  by  and  gazes  at  them,  or  more 
often  stands  in  stolid  rows  and  admires.  The  ladies 
are  perhaps  a  trifle  too  well  dressed  and  the  children 
mostly  over-dressed.  But  this  is  their  "  life."  This 
paseo  is  what  they  live  for,  so  they  strive  to  appear  at 
their  best  and  to  display  their  possessions  of  silks  and 
satins,  while  the  jovenes  distinguidos  have  all  had  their 
boots  polished  to  the  nth  degree  just  before  they  came 
into  the  street.  And  the  scene  is  undeniably  enchant- 
ing, when  the  electric  lights  blaze  out.  There  are  hun- 
dreds of  projecting  shops-signs,  in  which  changing  elec- 
tric lights  are  now  revealed  and  now  occluded,  and 
the  great  warehouses  are  all  illuminated  as  though  it 
were  another  centenario,  news  vendors  are  calling 
La  Razon,  El  Diario,  Caras  y  Caretas,  or  Fray 
Mocho,  and  the  whole  has  the  atmosphere  of  some 
brilliant  bazaar,  rather  than  of  the  highway  of  a 
great  city.  It  is  a  feast  of  light,  but  not  of  gaiety,  for 
the  Argentines  are  not  given  to  joyousness  and  are 
strangely  lacking  in  humour;  everybody  is  frightfully 
formal  and  all  are  obviously  conscious  of  being  well 
dressed.  It  is  Vanity  Fair  with  the  fun  left  out! 

Towards  the  river,  the  street  of  San  Martin   (in- 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  65 

escapable  national  hero  who  pursues  you  everywhere 
in  statue,  in  street  and  place-name,  in  "  cocktails,"  in 
every  conceivable  connection)  runs  parallel  to  Florida 
but  bears  no  resemblance  to  it  except  in  being  equally 
narrow.  It  is  essentially  an  earnest  business  thorough- 
fare, lined  with  many  fine  office  buildings,  and  choking 
perpetually  with  traffic.  But,  by  the  way,  many  of 
these  business  buildings  that  look  so  "  up-to-date " 
from  the  outside  are  antiquated  within.  It  is  a  fact 
that  up  to  so  recently  as  a  year  ago  builders  were  in 
the  habit  of  erecting  large  tenements  which  they  well 
knew  would  be  utilised  for  nothing  but  offices,  yet  they 
built  them  deliberately  for  "  flats/'  or  departamentos, 
as  these  are  called,  fitting  each  with  its  kitchen  and 
bathroom  and  disposing  the  apartments  as  for  bed- 
rooms and  salons.  Thus  you  will  find  to-day  hundreds 
of  business  firms  using  such  modern  flats  as  offices, — 
in  some  cases  the  bathrooms  remaining,  in  others  con- 
verted into  "  enquiry  office,"  or  the  like, —  all  ex- 
tremely uncomfortable  in  conditions  entirely  foreign 
to  their  requirements.  But  San  Martin  contains  sev- 
eral imposing  blocks  of  real  office  buildings  and  will 
presently  contain  more,  for  the  builders  are  busy  here, 
as  everywhere  else,  with  their  work  of  transformation. 
A  friend  of  mine,  when  I  called  on  him  at  the  beginning 
of  May,  1913,  had  just  received  notice  to  quit,  by  the 
demolishers  arriving  and  starting  to  unroof  his  office ! 
That  was  his  first  intimation  that  the  landlord  pur- 
posed clearing  away  his  old  property  and  putting  up 
a  great  new  business  building.  Argentine  methods 
are  not  ours. 

One  "  square  "  nearer  the  river  runs  Reconquista, 


66  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

dignified  by  the  presence  of  the  principal  bank  build- 
ings, many  of  which  are  real  ornaments  of  the  town  and 
all  suggest  a  sense  of  opulence  and  financial  solidity  it 
would  be  hard  to  match  even  in  New  York  or  London. 
Yet  the  best  of  them,  the  richest  and  the-  most  sub- 
stantial, are  no  more  than  the  branches  of  the  Tree  of 
English  Gold  which  has  its  roots  deep-struck  in  Lon- 
don City.  It  is  a  street  of  all  nations  this  Reconquista. 
England,  France,  Germany,  Spain,  Italy,  and  the  rest 
have  their  banking  houses  here,  and  there  is  no  more 
encouraging  sight  in  this  remorseless  city  than  to  wit- 
ness the  many  ill-clad  Spanish  and  Italian  labourers 
going  through  the  long  and  intricate  operation  of  send- 
ing drafts  home  to  those  they  have  left  in  the  old  coun- 
try. Many  hundreds  have  I  seen  with  eager,  straining 
faces,  scanning  the  pink  or  green  slips  of  paper  that 
would  mean  so  much  to  some  one  far  away  in  Lom- 
bardy  or  in  Catalonia,  and  represented  so  much  of  the 
sweat  of  his  brow  to  the  poor  sender. 

The  practice  of  keeping  a  bank  account  is  very  gen- 
eral, even  among  the  labouring  classes,  as  the  poor 
peon  has  nowhere  to  hide  his  little  hoard,  living  as  he 
does  in  the  most  shameful  conditions,  where  a  square 
yard  of  living-room  is  more  costly  than  a  cottage  would 
be  in  his  native  village,  and  among  people  who  do  not 
hesitate  at  murder  to  gain  a  few  pitiful  pesos.  Thus 
you  will  often  see  a  lean  and  hungry  labourer,  dressed 
no  better  than  an  English  tramp,  scrutinising  his  bank 
book  in  the  corridor  of  one  of  the  great  banking  houses, 
and  the  sight  is  a  strange  one  to  English  eyes.  Turks, 
Polish  Jews,  Norwegians,  Russians,  Cingalese,  Swedes, 
Armenians,  all  the  nations  of  the  world  are  represented 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  67 

daily  in  the  teeming  throngs  that  flock  to  the  banks  in 
Reconquista,  where  the  innumerable  clerks  are  puffing 
steadily  at  cigarettes  and  attending  to  their  clients  with 
a  charming  ease  that  has  in  it  a  pleasant  suggestion  of 
eternity.  For  the  simplest  banking  operation  will  eat 
away  twenty  minutes  of  your  time,  as  your  account  is 
balanced  whenever  you  withdraw  or  lodge  any  sum, 
and  to  secure  a  draft  on  London  at  ninety  days,  calls 
for  the  patience  of  Job  and  three-quarters  of  an  hour. 
Much  of  this  formality  is  the  result  of  the  system  of 
issuing  open  checks,  which  makes  swindling  delight- 
fully simple,  and  the  bank  always  stands  to  lose,  as 
there  is  extreme  difficulty  in  bringing  a  swindler  to 
book. 

The  last  of  the  narrow  streets  riverward  is  Calle 
25  de  Mayo,  so  called  from  the  day  in  the  year  1810 
when  the  movement  for  Independence  began,  although 
the  actual  date  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is 
9th  July,  1816.  They  have  a  curious  habit  of  think- 
ing in  dates  in  Latin  countries.  Both  Paris  and  Rome 
give  us  examples  of  famous  dates  as  street  names,  but 
in  South  America  dates  are  honoured  to  a  degree  that 
is  comic.  One  of  my  friends  in  Montevideo  has  an 
office  in  25  de  Mayo,  a  showroom  in  18  de  Julio,  and 
warehouses  in  2 1  de  Agosto  and  in  1 5  de  Octubre !  By 
some  odd  chance  he  always  found  what  he  needed  most 
in  one  of  the  streets  named  after  Uruguay's  historic 
dates.  There  was  another  such,  I  de  Mayo,  but  it 
offered  him  no  accommodation  else  he  should  have 
taken  premises  there  also,  just  to  complete  the  series. 
Calle  25  de  Mayo  in  Buenos  Ayres  has  long  been  one 
of  the  degenerate  parts  of  the  town,  entirely  unworthy 


68  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  the  historic  event  it  commemorates.  But  it  is  be- 
ing gradually  reformed  and  may  yet  take  on  an  aspect 
of  decency.  Near  the  Plaza  de  Mayo  it  contains  some 
fine  new  buildings,  but  westward  [tjs^still  the  haunt  of 
undesirables,  although  the  English  pro-cathedral  stands 
there,  a  plain  and  not  undignified  structure  with  which 
I  made  no  close  acquaintance. 

From  25  de  Mayo  the  ground  falls  quickly  to  the 
Paseo  de  Julio,  the  former  street  occupying  the  level 
of  what,  no  doubt,  was  long  ago  the  bank  of  the  river. 
This  is  the  only  semblance  of  a  hill  in  all  the  district. 
Inland  for  leagues,  the  city  lies  flat  as  the  proverbial 
pancake,  while  below  towards  the  river,  the  Paseo  and 
the  gardens  beyond,  with  the  buildings  of  the  port  in 
the  further  distance,  occupy  a  lower  level  of  land  re- 
claimed from  the  river.  If  anybody  wants  an  enemy 
"  put  out  of  the  way  "  for  a  matter  of  twenty  dollars 
or  so,  he  will  have  no  difficulty  in  finding  a  villain  ready 
for  the  job  somewhere  along  the  arcaded  haunts  of  the 
Paseo.  In  one  respect  the  Paseo  de  Julio  resembles 
Princess  Street,  Edinburgh,  which,  as  the  Irishman 
said,  "  is  no  more  than  half  a  strate,  as  it  has  only  one 
side  to  it."  The  Paseo  has  only  one  side  to  it,  and 
it  is  a  bad  one.  The  second  stories  of  the  buildings 
that  stand  between  the  Paseo  and  25  de  Mayo  are  on 
the  road  level  of  the  higher  street.  Thus  it  might  be 
possible,  for  aught  I  know,  to  enter  one  of  the  low 
dens  on  the  Paseo  and  mounting  two  or  three  floors 
within  its  evil  and  mysterious  interior,  emerge  on  the 
level  of  25  de  Mayo.  The  lower  stories  of  these 
buildings  on  the  Paseo  side  are  arcaded,  and  these  ar- 
cades are  the  haunt  of  "  all  things  perverse,  abomina- 


EXTERIOR  OF  THE  JOCKEY  CLUB,  BUENOS  AYRES. 

A  good  photograph  of  this  famous  building  cannot  be  made,  the  street  being  too 
narrow  to  admit  of  focus,  even  from  the  upper  storeys  opposite.  In  the  right  bottom 
corner  part  of  a  window-sill,  or  ledge  of  roof,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street, 
appears  in  this  photograph. 


THE  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  69 

ble."     According   to   the   local  press,    after  nightfall 
no  man  dare  appear  there  wearing  a  collar,  and  any  one 
who  requires  the  aid  of  eye-glasses  must  not  venture 
thither.     Often  have  I  wandered  among  the  stinking 
peones   and   cosmopolitan   criminals  who   throng  the 
arcades  by  day,  but  I  know  not  the  Paseo  by  night. 
The  shops  are  kept  by  all  sorts  of  cheap  clpthiers,  gen- 
eral dealers,  and  many  cutlers,  whose  windows  are  ex- 
clusively given  over  to  the  display  of  long  knives  or 
daggers.     Probably  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  frequenters 
of  the  arcades  carry  one  of  these  dirks,  like  the  old 
Scottish  Highlander,  and  the  other  forty  per  cent,  are 
armed  with  revolvers,  of  which  hundreds  are  exposed 
for  sale  in  the  arcades.     There  is  no  lack  of  "  cheap 
Jacks  "  with  "  special  lines  "  to  clear  at  a  sacrifice. 
There   are  many  filthy  looking  restaurants  and  pro- 
vision shops ;  and  more  librerias,  which  expose  nothing 
but  the  filth  of  the  Continental  press  translated  into 
Spanish  and  Italian.     If  you  look  at  one  of  their  win- 
dows for  a  minute,  out  pops  the  greasy  owner,  spider- 
like,  to  enquire  if  by  any  chance  you  would  like  to  in- 
spect his  more  secret  stock  of  fotografias  muy  curiosas, 
while  youths  will  thrust  under  your  nose  an  envelope 
of  obscene  photographs,  with  a  particularly  offensive 
one  exposed.     The  whole  atmosphere  is  vile.     The 
cinematographs  and  raree  shows  that  also  abound  in 
these  arcades  may  be  no  more  pernicious  than  many  in 
the  Bowery,  but  that  is  a  matter  on  which  no  decent 
visitor  can  speak,  as  none  such  could  risk  the  contamina- 
tion of  entering  therein.     It  is  a  male  crowd  that  is 
always  circulating  in  the  Paseo.     Never  have  I  seen  a 
decent  woman  there,  and  indeed  no  more  than  a  half-a- 


70  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

dozen  hatless  sluts  are  ever  to  be  noticed  under  its 
arcades. 

This  abomination  must  pass.  It  exists  merely  be- 
cause landowners  have  preferred  to  hold  their  old 
rotten  properties,  and  allow  them  to  be  used  by  the 
scum  of  the  population,  until  such  time  as  it  would  pay 
them  to  sell  out.  The  transformation  has  already  be- 
gun; the  pestiferous  old  buildings  are  giving  way  to 
modern  ones,  devoted  to  cleaner  purposes.  Some  day 
the  haunts  of  the  criminals  may  be  utterly  wiped  out 
and  the^aseo  de  Julio  become,  what  it  might  well  be, 
one  of  the  pleasantestlhoroughfares  of  a  great  city. 

Up  the  little  hill  from  the  Paseo,  one  gains  the  Plaza 
de  Mayo,  whence  stretches  for  a  mile  and  a  half  in  the 
most  approved  Haussmannesque  straightness  the 
Avenida  de  Mayo,  ending  in  the  massive  palace  of 
Congreso.  Lined  with  many  handsome  buildings,  of 
six,  eight,  or  even  a  dozen  stories,  whose  shadows  are 
falling  athwart  the  broad  and  teeming  roadway,  while 
the  westering  sun  is  making  iridescent  the  white  marbles 
of  the  great  domed  Congreso  in  the  far  distance,  here 
in  the  new  land  of  South  America  is  at  least  one  fine 
city  highway  that  may  hold  up  its  head  among  the 
world's  best.  There  is  a  suggestion  of  a  Paris  boule- 
vard in  the  Avenida;  a  suggestion  of  form,  but  as- 
suredly not  of  life  nor  of  "  atmosphere."  And  there 
the  rivalry  between  the  two  great  Latin  cities  begins 
and  ends ! 

The  great  Avenida  Callao  runs  at  right  angles  with 
the  Avenida  de  Mayo  from  the  Plaza  Congreso.  It 
is  badly  paved,  but  contains  many  attractive  buildings 
of  cement.  Some  day  perhaps  it  may  become  the  cen- 


THE.  STREETS  OF  BUENOS  AYRES  71 

tral  thoroughfare  of  the  city.  There  are  those  who 
believe  it  will,  but  in  my  judgment  it  will  call  for  a 
greater  revolution  than  they  have  ever  known  in  Ar- 
gentina to  shift  the  centre  of  gravity  from  the  Calles 
Maipu,  Florida,  and  San  Martin  to  Callao.  Between 
Florida  and  Callao  there  are  eleven  parallel  streets. 
All  are  incessantly  busy  from  early  morning  till  night- 
fall, while  Maipu,  Esmeralda,  and  Suipacha,  in  the  or- 
der given  parallel  to  Florida,  are  busy  even  through 
the  night.  All  sorts  of  shops  abound  in  these 
thoroughfares  and  business  offices  innumerable,  as  well 
as  many  places  of  entertainment,  restaurants,  and  cafes. 
But,  apart  from  Florida,  all  these  streets  that  lie  to  the 
north  of  the  Avenida  de  Mayo  are  so  characterless  that 
after  many  years  of  residence  it  would  puzzle  even 
those  with  an  abnormal  "  bump  of  locality  "  to  say  in 
which  street  they  found  themselves  if  they  stepped 
from  a  cab  in  any  one  of  them  without  having  noted 
some  landmark  on  the  way.  In  the  suburbs  it  is  even 
more  difficult  to  realise  at  a  glance  where  you  may 
happen  to  be,  and  the  policeman  often  cannot  tell  you 
the  name  of  the  street  he  is  patrolling.  I  remember 
asking  a  policeman  in  a  street  near  the  Plaza  Libertad 
for  Frank  Brown's  Circus  (Brown  is  an  American  or 
an  Englishman  who  has  made  and  lost  fortunes  in 
circuses  throughout  South  America).  "  Oh,"  said  he, 
"  you  are  going  the  wrong  way.  It  is  at  the  corner  of 
Florida  and  Cordoba."  Now,  I  knew  that  some 
eighteen  months  or  two  years  before  it  had  stood  there, 
but  was  deliberately  burned  to  the  ground  by  the  jingo 
youths  of  the  city,  who  were  offended  by  some  quite 
innocent  action  of  the  unfortunate  Brown.  This 


72  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

policeman,  some  eight  or  ten  squares  away  from  the 
scene,  had  not  yet  heard  the  news,  and  meanwhile  a 
magnificent  pile  of  ferro-concrete  architecture,  the 
Centro  Naval,  had  been  reared  on  the  spot!  I  found 
the  new  circus  by  describing  to  another  policeman,  who 
at  first  denied  all  knowledge  of  it,  a  big  building  to 
which  thousands  of  people  had  been  flocking  for  two 
or  three  nights  past.  Then  a  light  dawned  on  his 
Indo-Spanish  soul.  "  Entonces,  senor"  said  he, 
"  se  encuentra  sin  duday  a  la  esquina  de  esta  misma 
calle>  porque  se  ha  concurrida  mucha  gente,  por  alia, 
estas  ultimas  noches"  It  was  even  so,  three  squares 
away  at  the  corner  of  the  street  in  which  I  had  speech 
with  the  policeman,  I  found  the  circus. 

There  is  no  end  to  what  I  might  write  about  the 
streets  of  Buenos  Ayres,  but  there  must  be  speedily,  if 
not  already,  to  the  interest  of  the  reader.  I  who  have 
tramped  them,  in  fair  weather  and  in  foul,  on  busy 
week  days  and  on  the  deadest  of  dull  dead  Sundays, 
mile  upon  mile,  seeking  for  interest  and  finding  but 
little,  now  discover  many  forgotten  impressions  com- 
ing up  on  the  films  of  the  mind,  which,  so  to  say,  I  have 
been  putting  into  the  developer,  and  though  these 
amuse  me,  I  doubt  if  they  would  equally  entertain 
others. 


CHAPTER  VI 

WHAT   WE    THOUGHT   OF   THE    WEATHER   AND 
THE    MOSQUITOES 

I  CANNOT  go  further  in  the  story  of  my  stay  in  Buenos 
Ayres  without  saying  something  very  definite  about  the 
weather.  Passing  references  have  already  been  made 
to  that  all-important  topic;  but  it  requires  a  chapter  to 
itself,  and  it  insists  on  having  it  here  and  now. 

As  I  have  said,  we  were  seekers  of  sunshine.  Well, 
we  found  it  —  and  also  some  fine  samples  of  most  sorts 
of  weather  known  between  the  Equator  and  the  Poles. 

We  arrived  early  in  April,  which  is  the  beginning  of 
autumn  in  the  Argentine.  As  the  reader  has  heard, 
the  morning  of  our  arrival  was  a  "  perisher."  Next 
day  I  found  my  hands,  for  the  first  time  since  boyhood, 
sore  and  "  chapped."  The  cold  wind  was  so  keen  that 
it  had  instantly  roughened  all  exposed  parts  of  the 
skin,  and  I  had  recourse  to  lanoline  to  soften  my  hands 
and  to  heal  my  cracked  lips.  But  on  the  third  day  the 
sun  came  forth  again  and  for  nearly  a  fortnight  the 
heat  was  almost  as  trying  as  in  a  New  York  summer. 
Everybody  was  mopping  his  forehead;  men  who,  a 
day  or  two  before,  had  been  going  about  in  great-coats, 
were  walking  the  streets  with  handkerchiefs  tucked  in- 
side their  collars  to  absorb  the  sweat.  And  suddenly 
it  would  change  to  a  bitter  night;  or  perhaps  one  went 
forth  in  the  sunny  morning  in  summer  clothes,  and  by 
noon  the  temperature  had  precipitately  dropped  fifteen; 

73 


74  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

or  twenty  degrees,  so  that  one  went  shivering  hotel- 
ward  for  lunch  and  a  change  of  clothes. 

Yet  a  Scotsman,  long  resident  in  Chile,  told  me  that 
I  would  find  Buenos  Ayres  had  the  finest  climate  in  the 
world !  I  wonder  where  he  will  go  to  when  he  dies. 

For  eight  months  I  had  occasion  to  comment  on  the 
weather  and  seldom  in  terms  of  congratulation.  The 
expatriated  English  and  the  few  portenos  of  British 
parentage  with  whom  I  came  into  frequent  contact  were 
strangely  prone  to  ask  me  what  I  thought  of  the 
weather,  whenever  it  happened  to  be  a  really  fine  day. 

"  Compare  this,"  they  would  say,  "  with  the  weeks 
of  fog  in  London  when  the  gas  has  to  be  lighted  all 
day  long  and  one  can't  breathe." 

"  My  dear  sir,"  (or  "  lady,"  as  the  case  more  often 
was),  I  might  timorously  make  answer,  "  you  speak  of 
what  is  as  much  a  tradition  as  the  red  wig  and  beard 
for  the  part  of  Shylock,  and  moreover  you  speak  to 
one  who  lias  seen  as  great  variety  of  weather  in 
Buenos  Ayres  as  in  London.  Yqur  memory  is  so  short 
that  you  forget  it  rained  monstrously  for  three  days 
last  week,  and  for  the  other  four  days  there  was  a 
white  chilling  vapour  over  all  the  town,  so  that  you 
could  not  see  the  length  of  two  squares  in  the  forenoon, 
and  when  the  vapour  had  cleared  it  was  as  though  you 
were  walking  on  vaselined  sidewalks." 

"  Oh,  but  that  was  exceptional." 

"  And  so,  it  may  be,  are  the  fogs  of  London.  But 
I'd  much  prefer  a  real  old  London  *  particler '  to  this 
marrow-searching,  flesh-chilling,  white  plague  that 
comes  up  from  the  River  Plate  in  your  winter-time  and 
gets  one  by  the  throat." 


THE  WEATHER  AND  THE  MOSQUITOES      75 
That  fine  line  of  Tennyson's, 

All  in  a  death-dumb,  autumn-dripping  gloom, 

comes  to  mind  in  Buenos  Ayres  on  one  of  these  days, 
but,  alas,  the  autumn  dripping  is  not  from  branchy  trees 
to  fragrant,  leaf-laden  loam,  nor  is  it  "  death-dumb." 
It  drips  from  gaunt  iron  frames,  from  broken  plas- 
tered walls,  from  tramcars,  from  horses'  harness.  A 
billiard  cue  taken  from  the  rack  will  feel  as  though  it 
had  been  lying  in  the  bath,  and  the  boots  which  you 
have  not  been  wearing  for  a  few  days  will  show  patches 
of  white  and  green  mould. 

But  it  is  true  that  between  April  and  November  there 
may  be  many  days  of  sunshine;  nay,  even  weeks  of  it 
at  a  stretch.  And  these  days  are  delicious.  There 
is  a  tang  of  freshness  in  the  air  such  as  comes  to  one 
on  a  fine  frosty  autumn  morning  on  the  heights  of  up- 
town New  York. 

Then  towards  the  end  of  November  the  sun  begins 
his  yearly  revel  and  till  the  end  of  March  Buenos  Ayres 
swelters  in  the  most  oppressive  heat  imaginable.  Not 
that  the  barometer  ever  attains  a  greater  height  than  it 
frequently  registers  in  New  York  City,  but  New  York 
rarely  experiences  such  long-sustained  periods  of  heat, 
and  the  humidity  —  due  to  the  mighty  volume  of  the 
River  Plate  —  makes  the  life  of  man  and  beast  a 
burden.  The  nights  bring  no  surcease.  Horses  die 
in  the  streets  by  the  score  every  day,  and  you  will  see 
their  carcasses  in  all  parts  of  the  town,  awaiting  re- 
moval. Lucky  are  the  inhabitants  who  can  escape  to 
Mar  del  Plata,  to  Montevideo  or  to  the  Hills  of  Cor- 
doba, but  they  are  few  compared  with  the  myriads  who 


76  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

must  remain  in  the  monstrous  stew-pot.  "  Long 
drinks  "  and  two  or  three  cold  shower  baths  are  now 
the  order  of  the  day.  But  even  the  cold  douche  has  its 
snares.  I  was  once  severely  scalded  by  taking  one,  as 
the  cistern  was  exposed  to  the  sun  and  the  water  had 
been  brought  near  to  boiling  point  without  the  aid  of  a 
u  geyser  " !  There  is  nobody  in  Buenos  Ayres  during 
the  summer  who  attaches  much  importance  to  the  scien- 
tific wiseacres  who  tell  us  the  heat  of  the  sun  is  diminish- 
ing. 

There  was  no  doubt  about  it  —  we  had  found  the 
sunshine  at  last.  And  like  so  many  of  the  quests  on 
which  mankind  sets  out,  our  find  was  no  better  than 
Dead  Sea  apples.  What  could  we  do  with  it?  Why, 
we  shut  it  out  of  our  rooms  by  every  means  in  our 
power;  we  wore  smoked  glasses  so  that  we  should  not 
see  it.  We  thought  of  the  Kentucky  nigger  who  was 
knocked  down  by  an  autumnal  blast  and  got  up  and 
shook  his  fist  at  the  invisible  force,  saying:  'Wind, 
wheah  wuz  you  dis  time  las'  July?  " 

It  will  be  gathered  from  what  I  have  said  that  the 
Argentine  has  no  lack  of  "  weather,"  wherein  it  re- 
sembles England,  which  Mark  Twain  alleged  had  only 
"  samples  "  of  climate.  It  has  all  the  essentials  of  the 
finest  climate  in  the  world,  but  no  wise  Providence  has 
blended  these  with  any  discretion.  In  the  course  of 
one  short  day  you  will  pass  through  all  the  seasons  of 
the  year,  and  though  it  never  snows,  I  have  experienced 
cold  in  Buenos  Ayres  equal  to  a  sharp  frost  in  New 
York.  Nay,  I  will  roundly  assert  that  no  wind  that 
sweeps  across  New  York  has  a  tooth  so  keen  as  the 
pampero.  One  has  to  be  out  in  Buenos  Ayres  when 


THE  WEATHER  AND  THE  MOSQUITOES      77 

the  wind  from  the  boundless  pampas  strikes  the  town 
to  know  how  cold  can  rake  through  to  the  marrow. 
Over  the  thousands  of  leagues  of  plains  it  blows,  direct 
from  the  snowy  Andes,  and  stirring  up  the  clammy 
effluvia  of  the  River  Plate  it  breathes  rheumatism, 
bronchitis,  consumption  over  the  city  —  the  hateful 
pampero ! 

Nor  have  the  people  learned  how  to  combat  their 
changeful  weather.  All  their  houses  are  built  for  sum- 
mer. They  are  excellent  for  four  months  of  the  year, 
and  uncomfortable  for  the  best  part  of  eight.  The 
ceilings  of  the  rooms  are  usually  five  feet  or  more 
higher  than  the  American  standard,  which  gives  one  a 
sporting  chance  of  a  breath  of  fresh  air  in  the  torrid 
season,  but  when  the  wind  blows  and  the  rain  pours, 
such  lofty  rooms,  tenanted  by  a  myriad  draughts,  are 
veritable  haunts  of  misery.  For  they  have  neither 
fireplaces  like  English  houses,  nor  stoves  like  American, 
while  steam  heating  is  in  its  infancy.  There  are  ac- 
tually modern  houses  in  which  "  dummy "  fireplaces 
have  been  built  for  show,  but  a  real  genuine  fireplace 
is  a  thing  which  most  Argentines  have  only  seen  on  a 
visit  to  Europe.  A  well-known  steam-heating  expert 
from  New  York,  who  was  sent  on  a  special  mission  of 
study  to  Buenos  Ayres,  told  me  that  in  many  of  the 
new  departamento  buildings  which  offer  the  attraction 
of  calef action  central  the  steam  heating  installation  is 
no  more  than  make-believe  for  selling  or  letting  pur- 
poses, but  never  calculated  to  supply  the  tenants  with 
warmth.  No,  the  Argentine  either  goes  to  bed  earlier 
or  puts  on  extra  clothing  in  the  cold  weather,  lounges 
about  his  house  with  an  overcoat  or  a  shawl  above  his 


78  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

winter  suit,  and  tries  to  warm  his  toes  at  an  oil  stove. 
The  ironmongers  make  great  display  of  these  stinking 
abominations  at  the  first  cold-snap,  and  the  papers  carry 
many  advertisements  of  their  merits,  their  "  odour- 
less "  quality  being  insisted  upon  in  every  case.  Elec- 
tric stoves  are  largely  and  successfully  used,  and  as 
electric  current  is  cheap  they  form  the  best  substitute 
for  a  coal  fire  —  although  the  English  believe  there 
is  no  substitute  in  all  the  world  for  a  fine  glowing  fire 
of  coal. 

"  Weather  "  is  indeed  a  staple  of  talk  in  the  Argen- 
tine, just  as  at  home.  Indeed,  to  a  greater  degree  does 
one  hear  people  discussing  the  weather  in  Buenos  Ayres 
even  than  in  London,  and  with  very  good  reason.  The 
fortunes  of  all  hinge  on  the  state  of  the  climate.  Too 
much  rain  and  the  harvests  are  spoiled;  too  much  heat 
and  horses,  cattle  and  sheep  perish  in  their  tens  of 
thousands.^  And  year  after  year  the  Argentine  suffers 
either  way.  Tell  an  estandero  that  you  have  seen  two 
or  three  locusts  flying  about  in  the  street  and  his  face 
will  blanch,  his  lip  quiver,  for  already  in  imagination 
he  sees  the  dreaded  plague  of  these  insects  devastating 
his  crops.  He  is  ever  in  a  state  of  nervous  fear  as  to 
whether  there  is  going  to  be  too  little  rain  or  too  much, 
and,  poor  man,  he  will  tell  you  with  glee  when  he  meets 
you  on  the  beastliest  of  rainy  days  that  "  it's  raining 
dollars."  If  you  meet  him  a  fortnight  later  and  it  is 
still  raining,  there  will  be  no  smile  on  his  face,  for  he 
fears  it  is  to  be  the  old,  old  story.  "  Last  year  and  the 
year  before  the  crops  were  nearly  in  the  bags  for  put- 
ting on  the  rail  and  yet  we  lost  them  through  the  rain." 
Raining  dollars,  forsooth !  For  a  day  or  two  that  may 


THE  WEATHER  AND  THE  MOSQUITOES      79 

be  so,  for  a  week,  perhaps;  but  later  on  it  rains  bank- 
ruptcy. Que  Undo  pais,  as  a  dear  old  self-deluded 
lady  used  to  say  when  telling  me  the  most  atrocious  un- 
truths about  her  adopted  country.  What  a  lovely 
country ! 

The  uncertainty  of  the  Argentine  weather  is  really 
incredible  to  any  one  who  has  been  fed  on  the  pap  of 
interested  hack-writers.  In  the  year  1911  the  great 
national  horse  race  at  Palermo  was  three  times  post- 
poned on  account  of  the  course  being  dangerously 
heavy  from  excessive  rain,  and  in  1912  it  was  post- 
poned once  for  the  same  reason,  being  run  on  the  suc- 
ceeding Sunday  on  a  course  that  was  still  sloppy.  Was 
the  Derby  ever  postponed  because  of  rain?  I  have  no 
Derby  lore,  but  I  should  be  surprised  to  learn  that  such 
a  thing  had  ever  happened  in  rainy  England. 

It  had  been  represented  to  me  before  I  went  to 
Buenos  Ayres  that,  so  reliable  was  the  climate,  one 
could  make  engagements  for  outdoor  sports  months 
ahead,  with  the  certainty  of  weather  conditions  being 
favourable.  During  my  stay  there,  numerous  lawn 
tennis,  golfing,  boating  and  picnic  engagements  were 
postponed  from  time  to  time  because  of  the  rain. 

In  short,  Argentine  weather  is  either  too  much  of 
a  good  thing  or  too  much  of  a  bad  thing.  The  dear 
old  lady  already  mentioned  told  me  that  she  had  to  live 
in  Buenos  Ayres  during  the  winter  because  the  roads 
to  her  estancia  were  quite  impassable  whenever  it 
rained,  but  it  was  lovely  there  for  a  few  weeks  in  the 
spring,  though  she  had  to  clear  out  as  soon  as  summer 
came,  as  the  place  was  so  infested  by  flies  and  mos- 
quitoes that  the  family  had  to  live  in  darkness,  never 


8o  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

daring  to  raise  the  blinds !  Buenos  Ayres  being  equally 
obnoxious  in  summer,  she  went  to  the  Hills  of 
Cordoba,  and  came  back  to  town  with  the  autumn. 
Thus  she  was  able  to  spend  a  few  short  weeks  of  each 
year  at  her  home  in  the  "Camp,"  and  the  rest  of  the 
year,  from  a  chair  in  the  hotel  drawing-room  she  sang 
the  praises  of  the  glorious  Argentine  weather  and  of 
the  country  that  blossoms  as  the  rose. 

The  final  touch  of  unloveliness  is  the  loss  of  the 
ruddy  glory  of  the  fall.  In  the  province  of  Buenos 
Ayres  especially,  there  is  no  gorgeous  funeral  for  King 
Summer;  no  shimmering  gold  of  hedge  and  bough. 
The  leaves  rot  on  the  trees  suddenly,  wither  into  pale 
colourless  things  that  to-morrow's  wind  sweeps  away 
and,  behold,  so  many  gaunt  and  shivering  skeletons  of 
trees.  When  man  dies  in  Buenos  Ayres,  they  coffin 
him  and  consign  him  to  his  corner  of  Chacarita  within 
twenty-four  hours.  Summer  dies  and  is  buried  with 
similar  despatch,  but  Nature  relatively  provides  less 
pomp  at  the  funeral  of  Summer  than  the  experts  in 
pampas  funebres  supply  for  the  average  Argentine 
who  yesterday  was  and  to-day  is  not. 

Insect  life  is,  of  course,  conditioned  by  the  weather. 
Yet  the  Argentine  mosquito  has  a  wonderful  power  of 
surviving  into  the  winter.  It  is  a  worker.  Its  in- 
dustry is  unquestionable.  I  shall  not  readily  forget 
how  I  was  plagued  by  this  small  product  of  a  great 
country.  On  various  occasions  I  had  to  limp  about  my 
affairs  with  absurdly  swollen  feet,  thanks  to  the  atten- 
tions of  these  tiny  pests.  An  afternoon  siesta  could 
only  safely  be  indulged  in  under  a  mosquito  net.  Even 
as  I  write  I  still  bear  traces  on  my  right  foot  of  a  par- 


THE  WEATHER  AND  THE  MOSQUITOES      81 

ticularly  venomous  bite  that  dates  back  more  than  six 
months  I 

"  Haw,  yes,  the  mosquitoes  always  get  the  Gringos," 
said  a  pimply  faced  young  Englishman  to  me,  when  I 
was  mentioning  my  first  experiences  nearly  a  year  later 
in  Montevideo. 

"  How  long  have  you  been  out  here?  "  I  inquired. 

u  Oh,  nearly  three  years  now,"  said  he. 

"  So  that  you  are  a  three  years'  Gringo,  I  suppose." 

The  English  youth  makes  haste  to  range  himself  with 
the  "  old  timers  "  and  will  lie  to  you  abominably  to 
convey  the  impression  that  he  is  no  longer  a  tenderfoot 
(though  a  Gringo  he  must  ever  be),  and  tell  you  that 
the  mosquitoes  never  touch  him,  while  you  can  see  him 
scratching  his  latest  bite !  The  fact  is  that  some  people 
are  more  subject  than  others  to  mosquito  bite  and 
there  are  many  thousands  of  native-born  who  never 
outgrow  the  susceptibility.  I  sincerely  sympathise 
with  .all  such,  as  the  mosquito  has  the  power  to  make 
their  lives  a  misery  for  at  least  six  months  of  the  year. 
Fleas  and  bugs  (the  loathsome  bed-hunter)  also  abound 
in  the  City  of  Good  Airs.  A  gentleman  of  my  ac- 
quaintance who  took  lodgings  in  a  native  doctor's  house 
was  told  by  the  housekeeper,  when  he  complained  about 
the  bugs  in  his  bed,  that  she  couldn't  help  them  — 
"they  were  natural."  That  was  his  complaint;  he 
would  rather  they  had  been  artificial.  The  bicho 
Colorado  is  another  busy  little  fellow,  the  size  of  a  pin- 
head.  He  haunts  the  grass  and  as  you  walk  over  that 
he  removes  his  habitat  to  your  foot,  bores  a  hole 
in  your  skin,  burrows  merrily  into  your  flesh'and  pro- 
duces a  sore  which  you  will  have  cause  to  remember 


82  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

for  many  a  day.  The  chemists  do  brisk  business  in 
selling  innumerable  "  preventatives  "  and  "  cures  "  for 
the  bites  of  mosquitoes  and  bichos  colorados,  but  all 
that  I  tried  were  failures,  until  I  discovered  in  that 
familiar  product,  liquid  ammonia,  a  really  effective 
banisher  of  the  pain. 

On  the  whole,  I  do  not  seem  to  have  formed  an 
extremely  favourable  opinion  of  the  weather  in  Buenos 
Ayres.  Like  that  famous  little  girl,  "  when  it  is  good 
it  is  very,  very  good;  but  when  it  is  bad  it  is  horrid." 
And  I  have  a  notion  that  the  little  girl  in  question  was 
none  too  often  "good."  As  for  the  insects;  well, 
Stalky's  pet  aversions,  the  "  bug-hunters,"  can  always 
be  sure  of  a  busy  time  in  and  around  Buenos  Ayres. 


CHAPTER  VII 

A    SPLENDID   CITY   OF   SHAM 

"  OF  course  we  all  work  in  sham,"  remarked  a  prom- 
inent Argentine  architect  to  me,  one  clear,  still  night, 
as  we  leant  together  over  the  rail  of  a  river  steamer, 
discussing  the  pros  and  cons  of  Buenos  Ayres  —  a 
subject  as  infinitely  interesting  to  River  Platers  as  the 
weather  to  the  Englishman. 

The  "  of  course  "  was  a  kindly  concession  to  some 
criticism  of  mine  and  showed  an  open  and  liberal  mind. 
The  architect  was  no  self-deluding  porteno  to  whom 
Buenos  Ayres  was  everything  good,  true  and  beautiful. 
He  was  prepared  to  admit  the  warts. 

He  were,  indeed,  the  blindest  and  most  incompetent 
of  observers  who  failed  to  notice  at  the  end  of  his 
first  hour  in  Buenos  Ayres  that  it  is  a  city  of  "  sham." 
—Its  buildings  are  of  no  distinctive  value  architectur- 
ally—  nay,  not  even  the  most  notable.  Without  ex- 
ception they  follow  European  models  in  exterior  treat- 
ment, no  matter  how  widely  they  may  differ  from  them 
interiorly.  That  many  of  the  public  buildings  are  im- 
posing, and  at  first  glance  look  like  "  the  real  thing," 
no  one  will  deny.  Besides,  he  who  were  foolish 
enough  to  deny  this  could  be  confronted  with  the  evi- 
dence of  the  official  photographs  which  have  conveyed 
to  an  envious  Europe  the  idea  that  Buenos  Ayres 
eclipses  her  worn-out  old  cities  in  its  architectural 
glories.  A  photograph  makes  lath  and  plaster  to 

83 


84  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

look  like  granite  and  porphyry.  Through  the  camera 
the  graceful  buildings  of  the  St.  Louis  "  World's  Fair  " 
appeared  as  permanent  as  the  pyramids,  though  a  few 
score  labourers  with  picks  and  shovels  wiped  them  out 
in  less  time  than  it  took  to  put  them  up. 

Buenos  Ayres  is  truly  a  city  of  sham.  Nor  is  this  to 
its  shame.  For  it  costs  more  to  erect  its  steel-frame 
and  cement  structures  than  it  does  in  Washington  or 
London  to  rear  solid  piles  of  masonry.  The  country 
is  destitute  of  workable  stone,  and  the  bricks  made 
in  the  Argentine  are  so  unsightly  and  spongy  that 
they  can  only  serve  as  a  base  for  plaster.  Wood  also 
is  scarce  and  the  gorgeous  doors,  without  which  no 
fine  building  in  Buenos  Ayres  would  be  considered  com- 
plete, have  to  be  imported  at  great  cost  from  Europe. 
Many  of  these  are  beautiful  and  in  this  one  respect  the 
city  may  be  said  to  outvie  Paris,  whence  comes  this 
taste  for  the  grandeur  in  gates. 

It  may  be  a  mere  old-world  prejudice  on  my  part,  but 
I  have  never  been  able  to  look  with  real  interest  on  a 
building  that  has  not  been  made  of  brick  or  stone. 
In  Europe,  in  the  United  States,  also,  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  historic  buildings  that  have  been  reared  by 
competent  workmen  with  the  idea  that  they  were  to 
last  forever,  which,  as  Ruskin  reminds  us,  is  the  only 
true  way  to  build.  To  come  to  a  new  land  and  find 
that  the  most  pretentious  efforts  of  the  builder's  craft 
are  chiefly  stucco  copies  of  European  stone-work, 
leaves  the  beholder  cold. 

The  Congreso  has  been  trying  for  some  years  to  be- 
come the  pride  of  the  town.  It  is  the  great  marble- 
veneer  palace  where  the  legislators  sit  —  in  a  literal 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  85 

sense,  for  they  deliver  their  speeches  seated  — -  and  it 
is  effectively  situated  at  the  western  end  of  the  spacious 
Avenida  de  Mayo.  It  has  been  many  years  in  course 
of  construction  and  I  am  afraid  to  say  how  many 
millions  of  money  have  been  spent  upon  it.  At  least, 
it  has  cost  more  than  three  times  the  amount  originally 
voted  for  it,  and  there  are  few  senators  or  deputies  who 
have  not  had  some  pickings  out  of  the  "  job."  No  man 
knows  when  it  will  be  finished,  for  it  is  said  that  as 
much  material  as  would  have  built  two  such  palaces 
has  gone  in  at  the  front  door  of  the  works  and  been 
mysteriously  absorbed.  The  explanation  is  that  many 
a  fine  residence  for  a  legislator  with  a  "  pull  "  has  been 
built  of  the  said  material,  after  it  had  gone  out  a  back- 
door! Meanwhile  the  gorgeous  Palacio  del  Congreso 
presents  a  noble  marble  front  to  the  great  Plaza  Con- 
greso and  stares  eastward  along  the  Avenida  without 
a  blush  for  its  ulterior  nakedness.  It  is  like  the  noble 
savage,  "  whose  untutored  mind  clothes  him  in  front 
and  leaves  him  bare  behind ";  for  when  you  have 
turned  the  corners  from  the  plaza  you  discover  that 
only  the  front  part  has  been  covered  with  marble  slabs ; 
behind  there  is  naught  but  dirty  naked  bricks.  So  it 
has  been  for  three  or  four  years  and  so  it  is  like  to  re- 
main for  some  years  to  come;  but. meanwhile  a  photo- 
graph of  the  front  does  good  service  for  sending 
abroad  as  an  evidence  of  the  architectural  grandeur  of 
the  capital  city. 

But  all  this  notwithstanding,  the  Congreso,  as  seen 
from  almost  any  point  of  the  Avenida,  is  an  imposing 
building.  Dignity  and  elegance  are  combined  in  its 
graceful  proportions,  and  its  elongated  dome  soars 


86  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

above  the  surrounding  buildings  with  a  fine  sense  of 
confidence.  The  Corinthian  column  is  used  very  ef- 
fectively in  the  facade  and  there  are  many  —  rather  too 
many  —  statuary  groups,  in  which  winged  figures  and 
ramping  horses  are  prominent.  Grand  stairways 
sweep  up  to  the  central  door  and  inclined  planes  make 
possible  the  near  approach  of  carriages.  But  immedi- 
ately one  steps  inside  there  is  disappointment.  The 
central  hall  is  of  mean  proportions,  and  in  a  few  min- 
utes all  is  confusion,  as  there  is  no  real  dignity  of  treat- 
ment, and  certain  inner  courtyards  are  actually  built 
with  painted  iron  pillars  hopelessly  out  of  harmony 
with  the  prevailing  style  of  the  building.  The  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies,  in  the  form  of  an  ellipse,  is  business- 
like and  handsome,  but  no  more  imposing  than  some  of 
the  council  chambers  of  the  great  provincial  cities  at 
home.  The  Senate  is  a  smaller  and  more  elegant 
chamber,  richly  furnished  with  ample  seats  of  ease 
and  commodious  desks  for  each  of  its  distinguished 
members.  There  is  another  luxurious  room,  dedicated 
to  special  ceremonies,  and  the  deputies'  lounge  is  im- 
mense and  well-appointed,  much  after  the  style  of  some 
of  the  big  New  York  clubs.  It  is,  indeed,  at  once  a 
club  and  an  exchange,  for  here  many  of  the  "  deals  " 
by  which  some  men  make  money  in  the  Argentine,  and 
others  lose  it,  are  consummated. 

On  the  first  floor  are  ranged  all  the  different  minis- 
terial offices  and  committee  rooms,  and  I  think  there 
were  only  two  of  these  to  which  I  did  not  gain  admis- 
sion. But  there  was  little  of  interest  to  note  in  them. 
The  fact  that  the  rooms  devoted  to  the  affairs  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  were  about  one-tenth  the  size  of  those 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  87 

required  for  the  department  of  Public  Works  was  elo- 
quent and  reassuring.  But  although  I  explored  the 
whole  building,  high  and  low,  I  find  I  have  retained 
only  a  very  blurred  impression  of  the  interior  with  its 
bewildering  passages,  through  which  liveried  servants 
bearing  trays  of  tea  dishes  were  constantly  passing,  as 
the  Argentine  deputy  is  a  firm  believer  in  getting  all 
he  can  out  of  his  country  in  addition  to  his  annual  sal- 
ary of  12,000  pesos  ($5,040),  feeding  at  public  ex- 
pense, not  only  himself,  but  as  many  relatives  and 
friends  as  have  the  good  sense  to  find  important  busi- 
ness to  transact  in  the  lobbies  of  Congress  at  meal 
times. 

A  very  handsomely  furnished  library  is  a  notable 
feature  of  the  palace.  It  is  small,  but  admirably  de- 
signed for  the  enshrinement  of  many  books.  One  of 
the  proudest  possessions  of  the  library,  pointed  out  to 
me  with  much  satisfaction,  is  a  complete  set  of  the 
Hansard  Debates  of  the  British  Parliament.  There 
are  standard  works  on  all  sorts  of  social  subjects  and 
books  of  statistics  enough  to  give  a  mere  literary  man 
a  headache.  I  noted  most  of  the  books  had  a  suspi- 
cious air  of  newness.  There  was  a  deputy  busy  con- 
sulting a  volume  of  Hansard,  but  no  other  thirster  after 
knowledge  in  the  library  at  the  time  of  my  visit. 

*  You  may  come  here  often,"  said  the  official  who 
was  showing  me  over  the  building,  "  and  you  will  sel- 
dom see  more  than  two  people  using  the  library, —  per- 
haps three." , 

The  restaurant  is  much  more  popular  with  the  dep- 
uties, but  there  is  no  doubt  that  if  any  of  them  ever  by 
chance  should  wish  to  "  verify  his  references  "  he 


88  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

would  find  no  difficulty  in  performing  that  most  laud- 
able and  improbable  task  with  the  aid  of  this  well- 
stocked  and  well-managed  library. 

On  the  whole,  the  impression  of  the  Palacio  de  Con- 
greso  upon  the  visitor  is  of  a  piece  with  the  capital  city. 
It  is  all  so  new,  and  all  so  unfinished,  and  promises  to  be 
rather  shoddy  when  eventually  it  is  finished.  As  a  tall 
strapping  doorkeeper,  who  showed  me  over  the  great 
rooms  in  the  basement  of  the  building,  where  are  stored 
in  iron  chambers  many  official  records,  said,  "  when 
they've  finished  the  building  they  will  have  to  start  all 
over  again  repairing  it." 

I  went  outside  on  a  balcony  at  the  back  to  examine 
the  still  uncovered  brick-work.  It  is  of  a  quality  which 
would  not  be  used  for  workmen's  cottages  in  England, 
but  once  it  has  been  hidden  under  plaster,  with  thin 
slabs  of  marble  imposed  thereon,  it  will  doubtless  pre- 
sent a  brave  appearance  for  some  years.  But  not  for 
all  time  1 

At  the  eastern  end  of  the  Avenida  stands  the  more 
historic  "Pink  House"  (Casa  rosada),  or  govern- 
ment building.  It  occupies  the  whole  width  of  the 
Plaza  de  Mayo  and  extends  backwards  to  the  Paseo 
Colon  beyond  —  a  mighty  pile  of  plastered  brick. 
Lacking  in  distinction  and  of  no  established  style,  it  is 
chiefly  notable  for  its  abundance  of  windows.  I  re- 
member counting  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  in  the 
east  front  alone,  so  that  the  whole  building  probably 
contains  upwards  of  six  hundred,  and,  with  so  many 
piercings  in  its  walls,  it  will  be  understood  that  little 
opportunity  was  left  for  architectural  ingenuity.  An 
immense  group  of  statuary  surmounts  the  central  part 


THE  PALATIAL  HOME  OF  "LA  PRENSA." 

Fa9ade  of  the  great  newspaper  office  on  the  north  side  of  the  Avenida  de  Mayo. 
Different  interior  views  of  this  building  are  given  at  pages  80  and  81. 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  89 

of  the  building,  and  this  too  is  most  likely  a  stucco  mas- 
terpiece, for  if  it  were  solid  stone  it  would  surely  bring 
down  the  roof.  The  whole  exterior  is  painted  pink 
and  on  a  bright  day  its  appearance  is  undeniably  pleas- 
ing, if  you  are  content  to  take  it  as  a  whole  and  some 
little  distance  off,  for  a  too  close  inspection  will  reveal 
many  shabby  patches  and  innumerable  corners  that  are 
calling  aloud  for  plaster  and  paint.  Indeed,  so  large 
is  the  Pink  House,  it  would  only  be  possible  to  give  it 
a  coat  of  paint  that  would  be  fresh  all  over  by  employ- 
ing an  army  of  workers,  for,  ordinarily  treated,  the 
paint  on  one  side  has  become  old  ere  the  painters  have 
reached  the  other. 

The  interior  of  the  Government  House,  Casa  de 
gobierno  —  which  is  the  official  designation  of  the  Casa 
rosada  —  contains  many  fine  apartments,  richly  fur- 
nished. The  great  ballroom  where  the  President  gives 
his  grave  and  stately  entertainments  from  time  to  time 
is  of  elegant  proportion  and  beautifully  decorated. 

At  the  northwest  corner  of  the  Plaza  de  Mayo 
stands  the  Cathedral.  Although  I  passed  it  daily  for 
some  eight  months,  I  never  mustered  up  sufficient  inter- 
est to  go  inside  —  I  who  have  spent  so  many  months 
of  my  life  among  the  musty  old  cathedrals  and  churches 
of  France.  I  felt  there  was  little  historic  about  this 
common  and  defective  imitation  of  a  Grecian  facade, 
vulgarised  by  wreaths  of  electric  bulbs  around  its  Co- 
rinthian columns.  At  first  glance  it  suggests  a  stock 
exchange  rather  than  a  place  of  Christian  worship. 
There  is  a  dome  of  glazed  tiles,  so  far  away  from  the 
low  and  squat  entrance  colonnade  —  which  faces  due 
south  —  that  it  seems  to  have  no  relation  to  it.  I  do 


90  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

not  remember  noting  the  material  of  the  building  — 
so  little  did  it  attract  me  —  but  I  fancy  it  consists  of 
the  usual  plastered  brick.  O*ie  day  I  did  seek  to  en- 
ter, but  could  find  no  door  that  was  open  and  never  do 
I  remember  to  have  seen  the  main  door  open  on  a  week 
day.  This  is  characteristic  of  the  churches  of  South 
America,  where  one  misses  that  generous  invitation  of 
the  fine  old  fanes  of  France.  Mainly,  the  Cathedral 
of  Buenos  Ayres  will  stay  in  my  memory  as  a  great 
stock  exchange  building  gone  wrong,  or  —  illumin- 
ated on  any  of  the  numerous  national  feast  days  —  as 
a  municipal  theatre  on  a  noche  de  gala. 

A  stone-throw  from  the  Cathedral  stands  the  Mu- 
nicipal Building,  or  Intendencia,  at  the  corner  of  the 
Avenida  and  the  Plaza  de  Mayo.  It  is  of  no  account, 
and  does  not  compare  in  interest  with  the  splendid 
palace  of  La  Prensa  adjoining  it.  I  confess  that  as  a 
journalist.  I  had  more  desire  to  inspect  the  famous 
building  of  the  great  Buenos  Ayres  daily  than  any  other 
sight  in  the  city.  During  my  stay  I  had  frequent  busi- 
ness with  the  management  of  La  Prensa  and  was  priv- 
ileged to  examine  every  corner  of  its  wonderful  home, 
on  one  occasion  spending  some  hours  in  the  building 
after  midnight,  when  the  sight  of  Buenos  Ayres  from 
the  globe  on  which  stands  the  Prensrfs  Goddess  of 
Light,  who  holds  aloft  her  flaring  torch  over  the  rest- 
less city,  is  surely  one  that  can  be  rarely  equalled  in  the 
world.  No  doubt  if  one  were  to  look  at  Paris  by  night 
from  the  apex  of  the  dome  over  the  Sacre  Coeur,  or 
London,  say  from  the  Clock  Tower  at  Westminster, 
the  sight  would  be  more  beautiful,  but  it  could  scarcely 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  91 

be  more  impressive,  as  the  extraordinary  flatness  of 
Buenos  Ayres  permits  the  observer  on  the  Prensa  tower 
to  survey  the  whole  vast  city  to  its  utmost  limits 
and  even  to  distinguish  the  twinkling  lights  of  La 
Plata,  the  provincial  capital,  twenty-four  miles  away. 
I  shall  not  readily  forget  that  starry  night  when,  at  two 
o'clock,  I  stood  up  there  in  the  lookout  beneath  the 
Goddess  of  Light  and  saw  the  great  noisy,  cruel  city 
as  a  prodigious  map  of  stars.  The  prodigality  of 
Buenos  Ayres  in  electric  light  was  evident  even  at  that 
hour,  for  mile  upon  mile  the  eye  could  follow  the  main 
streets  with  their  double  lines  of  radiant  dots,  thinning 
gradually  as  they  flickered  into  the  boundless  plain  be- 
yond, while  on  the  fringes  of  the  mighty  metropolis 
appeared  numerous  constellations  betokening  the  sub- 
urbs which  the  Federal  Capital  threatens  to  engulf. 

The  interior  of  the  Prensa  building  would  require  a 
chapter  to  itself  to  describe  it  with  any  attempt  at  de- 
tail. That  is  not  possible  here  and  a  mere  glimpse  of 
it  must  suffice.  It  is  almost  everything  that  our  Eng- 
lish ideas  would  expect  a  newspaper  office  not  to  be. 
If  you  enter  from  the  front,  there  is  nothing  in  the  busi- 
ness department  to  strike  your  attention.  There  are 
many  newspaper  offices  in  the  United  States  quite  as  im- 
posing. Nor  is  there  anything  particularly  worthy  of 
note  in  the  reportorial  rooms,  the  library,  or  any  of  the 
workaday  departments,  though  the  note  of  luxury  is 
probably  more  pronounced  in  the  apartments  of  the 
editor  and  the  editorial  writers  than  in  most  American 
offices.  The  machine  room  is  splendidly  equipped. 
The  overseer,  I  was  told,  was  an  Argentine,  but  I  sus- 


92  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

pect  he  was  of  British  or  German  parentage,  for  the 
native  has  little  aptitude  for  mechanics.  His  assistant 
was  a  Britisher. 

There  is  a  series  of  "  show  "  rooms  which  made  it 
hard  for  one,  like  myself,  whose  life  has  been  spent 
in  newspaper  offices  at  home  amid  the  well-loved  odour 
of  printer's  ink,  to  imagine  himself  within  a  building 
devoted  to  the  production  of  a  daily  newspaper.  At 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning  what  a  scene  of  hustle  is  a 
daily  newspaper  office  in  New  York!  Here  every- 
thing was  as  quiet  and  orderly  as  in  a  museum  when 
the  visitors  have  gone !  And  in  truth  it  reminded 
me  not  a  little  of  a  museum.  There  was  a  magnificent 
concert  hall,  superbly  decorated,  with  painted  panels 
for  the  doing  of  which  artists  had  come  especially  from 
France.  Here  many  of  the  most  famous  operatic  stars 
who  have  visited  Buenos  Ayres  have  appeared  before 
select  audiences  invited  by  the  Prensa;  celebrated 
actors  have  tried  new  plays  and  illustrious  visitors 
from  foreign  lands  have  addressed  privileged  audi- 
ences in  many  different  tongues.  The  value  of  such  a 
hall  to  a  newspaper  is  so  obvious  that  it  is  surprising 
none  of  the  New  York  journals  has  yet  attempted  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  I  think  the  Prensa  salon  accommo- 
dates an  audience  of  some  five  hundred,  and  it  is 
smaller  than  the  very  charming  little  theatre  of 
Femina,  the  Paris  ladies'  journal,  in  the  Champs 
Elysees. 

Then  there  is  a  suite  of  living-rooms,  fronting  to 
the  Avenida,  worthy  of  a  prince.  These  have  been 
placed  at  the  disposition  of  distinguished  visitors  to 
the  Argentine  with  a  liberality  that  has  not  always 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  93 

been  duly  appreciated,  for  I  was  told  that  this  very 
pleasant  custom  of  honouring  the  country's  guests  has 
more  than  once  been  abused  by  a  visitor  staying  so  long 
that  he  threatened  to  become  a  permanent  boarder  of 
the  Prensa.  Hence,  it  may  be,  that  the  custom  is  no 
longer  to  be  maintained,  and  I  can  imagine  the  business 
side  of  the  newspaper  can  make  even  better  use  of  the 
space.  A  sports-room  for  the  staff  includes  appliances 
for  every  variety  of  indoor  sport  and  exercise,  from 
billiards  to  fencing,  nor  need  one  ever  be  at  a  loss  for  a 
cooling  bath  in  the  hot  summer  days,  as  the  bathrooms 
and  lavatories  are  worthy  of  a  first-class  New  York 
hotel.  But,  most  curious  of  all,  perhaps,  are  the  medi- 
cal and  dental  departments.  The  rooms  for  the 
physicians  and  surgeons  on  the  staff  of  the  Prensa  are 
supplied  with  all  the  latest  medical  and  surgical  ap- 
pliances, and  readers  of  the  paper  can  come  here  free 
of  charge  for  advice  and  treatment.  There  is  also  a 
legal  department,  where  skilled  lawyers  look  into  the 
troubles  of  the  newspaper's  subscribers ! 

In  short,  the  Prensa  building  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting sights  of  Buenos  Ayres  and  a  notable  orna- 
ment of  the  Avenida.  It  is  an  epitome  of  Argentine 
progress,  for  less  than  fifty  years  ago  the  journal  was 
a  humble  little  four-page  sheet,  issued  from  some 
scrubby  little  shanty,  while  to-day  it  is  one  of  the 
wealthiest,  as  it  is  one  of  the  largest,  newspapers  in 
the  world,  housed  in  a  palace  that  cost  $1,500,000  to 
build.  Its  enterprising  founder,  the  late  Dr.  Jose  Paz, 
died  at  Nice  a  week  or  two  before  I  left  England  and 
I  was  later  present  at  the  ceremony  of  receiving  his 
remains  in  Buenos  Ayres  for  interment  at  Recoleta,  the 


94  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

last  resting  place  of  the  Argentine's  aristocrats.  He 
had  built  another  palace  for  the  whole  Paz  family  in 
the  Plaza  San  Martin,  one  of  the  most  magnificent 
buildings  in  the  city  and  one  of  the  most  princely  pri- 
vate residences  I  have  ever  seen  in  any  land,  but  he  was 
not  spared  to  see  it  occupied. 

If  we  cross  the  Avenida  and  go  some  four  squares 
down  the  Calle  Defensa  we  shall  come  to  one  of  the 
few  historic  buildings  in  the  city  —  the  church  of  Our 
Lady  of  the  Rosary  —  Nuestra  Senora  del  Rosario. 

There  is  nothing  worthy  of  note  in  its  architecture, 
but  in  the  tower  which  surmounts  the  front  entrance  — 
to  the  north  —  a  number  of  cannon  balls  are  embedded 
in  the  mortar  of  which  the  church  is  built.  These  are 
said  to  be  relics  of  the  British  bombardment  of  1806 
and  within  are  the  flags  which  the  Spanish  viceroy, 
Liniers  (a  Frenchman,  by  the  way),  took  from  the 
British  troops  under  General  Carr  Beresford  when 
they  were~  compelled  to  surrender  to  superior  forces 
after  their  brief  and  ill-advised  occupation  of  the 
citadel  from  June  to  August  of  that  year.  Liniers 
promised  the  flags  of  the  conquered  British  to  Nuestra 
Senora  del  Rosario  before  he  went  forth  to  engage 
Beresford  on  the  I2th  of  August,  and  there  they  hang, 
objects  of  no  small  pride  to  the  patriotic  Argentine. 
(This  on  the  authority  of  the  native  historian,  Senor 
Jose  Manuel  Eizaguirre,  though  Mr.  Cunninghame 
Graham  states  that  the  flags  were  taken  from  the  in- 
competent General  Whitelock  in  his  disastrous  attempt 
to  retake  the  town  in  1807,  and  that  they  hang  in  the 
Cathedral.) 

There  are  indeed  few  churches  in  Buenos  Ayres  that 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  95 

will  repay  a  visit.  All  are  edifices  of  little  note  and, 
almost  without  exception,  stuck  rather  shamefacedly 
among  other  buildings  where  you  may  pass  a  dozen 
times  and  never  notice  them  once.  Buenos  Ayres  has 
other  business  in  hand  than  matters  of  the  soul.  No 
one_coujd  describe  it  as  an  aggressively  religious  city. 
The  Jockey  Club  is  more  to  its  taste.  It  stands  rather 
more  than  half-way  along  the  Calle  Florida,  going 
from  the  Avenida  towards  the  Plaza  San  Martin. 
That  admirable  English  word  of  recent  invention, 
u  swank,"  was  surely  coined  by  some  one  familiar  with 
the  Jockey  Club  of  Buenos  Ayres.  But  for  the  mo- 
ment I  shall  not  seek  to  illustrate  this  by  attempting  to 
describe  the  spirit  that  animates  this  bizarre  and  curi- 
ous institution.  In  this  chapter  I  am  concerned  only 
with  its  outward  appearance.  That  is  by  no  means 
unpleasing,  though  the  facade  of  the  building  is  con- 
stricted and  the  narrowness  of  the  street  prevents  one 
from  obtaining  a  satisfactory  view  of  it.  It  is  covered 
with  an  infinity  of  electric  bulbs  and  no  occasion  to  light 
these  is  ever  allowed  to  pass  unregarded.  Often  have 
I  seen  the  building  aglow  like  Aladdin's  Palace  in  a 
Drury  Lane  pantomime  and  scarce  a  soul  within  sight 
to  feast  his  eyes  on  the  outward  magnificence  of  this 
great  national  institution  which  exists  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  best  breeds  of  man's  devoted  servant, 
the  horse  (no  me  parece,  as  they  say  in  Buenos  Ayres, 
or  "  I  don't  think,"  as  they  say  elsewhere). 

Westward  some  six  or  seven  squares  from  Florida 
one  encounters  in  the  Plaza  Lavalle  several  noteworthy 
buildings.  On  the  west  side  of  that  fine  plaza  the  new 
Tribunales,  or  Law  Courts,  have  just  been  completed, 


96  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

and  Buenos  Ayres  has  nothing  finer  in  the  way  of  archi- 
tecture to  show.  Conceived  on  a  massive  scale  and 
carried  out  with  unusual  thoroughness  of  detail,  this  is 
a  magnificent  palace  for  the  housing  of  Justice,  and  as 
Justice  is  by  no  means  blind  in  the  Argentine  she  will 
find  much  in  her  palace  to  occupy  her  attention,  even  to 
distract  it  from  those  duties  which  in  other  lands  she 
is  supposed  best  to  perform  with  shut  eyes.  Why  a 
style  that  is  reminiscent  of  Assyria  and  Byzantium 
should  have  been  chosen,  I  know  not,  unless  Argentine 
Justice  is  of  Oriental  origin;  but  the  effect  is  undoubt- 
edly imposing.  The  six  massy  columns  of  the  cen- 
tral fagade  spring  upwards  to  the  height  of  five  tall 
stories,  with  a  large  sense  of  strength  and  permanence, 
though  it  is  true  they  begin  in  noble  stone  only  to  con- 
tinue upward  in  concrete.  The  five  entrances  are  gen- 
erously inviting,  but  every  Argentine  knows  that  when 
he  enters  there  to  lodge  a  suit  Heaven  alone  can  guess 
how  old  he  will  be,  how  grey  his  hairs,  when  he  comes 
out  again  with  a  verdict.  Three  more  stories  tower 
above  the  great  plinth  of  the  pillars,  and  over  the  en- 
trance runs  a  fine,  spacious  colonnade  of  Ionic  columns. 
The  building  of  the  Tribunales  is,  in  truth,  one  of  the 
finest  palaces  of  justice  in  any  great  city  of  the  world, 
exceeded  in  sheer  bulk,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  only 
by  the  Palais  de  Justice  of  Brussels,  which  is  colossal 
beyond  all  reason.  Even  though  a  vast  deal  more 
cement  than  enduring  stone  has  gone  to  its  making,  it 
will  long  remain  the  most  noteworthy  architectural 
effort  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and  one  cannot  look  upon  it 
without  feeling  a  certain  reverence  for  the  intentions  of 
its  builders.  If  Argentine  Justice  will  only  endeavour 


A  PRINCELY  SANCTUM— ROOM  OF  THE  "PRENSA'S"  CHIEF  EDITOR. 


A  CORNER  OF  THE  MEDICAL  CONSULTING  ROOM  OF  THE  "PRENSA.' 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  97 

to  "  live  up  to"  the  dignity  of  her  new  home,  the 
citizens  of  the  great  young  republic  will  have  reason 
to  congratulate  themselves. 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  same  ample  plaza  stands 
the  Teatro  Colon  (Columbus  Theatre),  the  home  of 
the  state-aided  opera.  The  citizens  are  immensely 
proud  of  this  fine  building  and  with  good  reason.  Al- 
ways allowing  for  the  difference  between  stone  and 
cement,  neither  Paris  nor  London  has  anything  finer 
than  this  palatial  theatre.  Admirably  situated,  it  is 
no  less  admirably  designed.  It  seems  large  enough  to 
contain  half  a  dozen  opera  houses,  and  indeed  the 
theatre  proper  occupies  less  than  half  of  the  great  build- 
ing. Near  the  Colon  rears  its  more  modest  head  the 
Colegio  Sarmiento.  Sarmiento  was  one  of  the  greatest 
men  the  Argentine  or  any  other  country  has  produced 
in  modern  times.  No  one  did  more  than  he  for  the 
advancement  of  his  native  land,  and  while  I  would 
have  preferred  to  see  the  Colon  dedicated  to  the 
memory  and  the  educational  ideals  of  the  famous  presi- 
dent, it  is  perhaps  only  in  accord  with  the  lessening 
ideals  of  our  day  that  amusement  and  social  preten- 
tiousness should  outvie  the  merely  intellectual  and 
useful. 

The  old  Teatro  de  la  Opera  still  stands  and  thrives 
under  private  management.  No  doubt  when  it  was 
first  built  it  was  thought  to  represent  the  last  word  in 
architectural  grandeur,  but  a  glance  at  its  rococo  fagade, 
wedged  between  two  other  bulidings  in  the  Calle  Cor- 
rientes,  after  having  looked  at  the  Colon,  will  show 
how  rapidly  Argentine  ideas  have  expanded  in  recent 
years. 


98  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

It  is  scarcely  possible  to  continue  an  orderly  corrv 
mentary  on  the  public  buildings  of  Buenos  Ayres  until 
one  has  passed  them  all  in  review.  There  are  too 
many  for  that,  and  many  are  too  similar.  Others  that 
I  call  to  mind  particularly  at  the  moment,  are  the  great 
offices  of  the  Water  Works  (Aguas  corrientes)  and 
the  Board  of  Education  (Junta  de  education),  both  of 
which  are  fine  examples  of  the  stately  manner  in  which 
the  Argentine  houses  its  public  departments.  The 
same  cannot  be  said  for  the  Art  Gallery.  I  am  willing 
to  concede  that  in  a  young  country  the  essential  things, 
such  as  good  drinking  water  and  elementary  education, 
should  take  precedence  over  the  fine  arts,  but  when 
so  noble  a  building  as  the  Colon  could  have  been 
erected  merely  to  provide  society  with  a  short  season 
of  social  diversion  each  year  (for  we  must  frankly 
admit  that  it  is  more  a  society  haunt  than  a  temple  of 
the  muse),  surely  it  might  have  been  possible  to  do 
something  worthier  of  the  graphic  arts  1  The  art 
gallery  occupies  a  commanding  site  on  the  northeast 
side  of  the  Plaza  San  Martin,  but  the  building  is  only 
a  second-hand  pavilion,  bought  from  some  exhibition 
(that  of  St.  Louis,  I  was  told)  and  re-erected  here. 
It  is  a  gimcrack  affair  of  iron  frame,  wood  and  gaudy 
tiles.  Although  it  looks  quite  attractive  in  a  photo- 
graph, the  shoddy  workmanship,  the  great  chunks  of 
coloured  glass,  used  as  items  of  the  decorative  scheme, 
and  the  general  air  of  temporariness  inseparable  from 
the  purpose  for  which  it  was  originally  designed,  leave 
one  with  the  impression  that  the  Argentines  set  a  very 
low  value  on  their  art  treasures.  Yet  there  are  several 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF  SHAM  99 

canvases  in  the  collection  that  may  be  worth  more  than 
the  building  that  houses  them.  The  sooner  this 
trashy  pavilion  is  thrown  on  the  scrap-heap  and  a 
worthy  gallery  erected,  the  better  for  the  reputation 
of  the  country  in  respect  to  the  fine  arts. 

One  other  public  building  there  is  that  calls  for  note. 
It  is  known  as  the  Casa  de  expositos,  and  occupies  an 
airy  position  on  the  great  thoroughfare  that  runs 
through  the  district  of  Barracas  —  Montes  de  Oca. 
It  is  an  immense  building,  larger  than  some  of  the 
great  London  workhouses,  and  seems  to  have  an  in- 
finity of  rooms  within.  There  is  no  fanciful  treatment 
of  the  exterior;  all  is  plain,  massive,  substantial.  The 
purpose  of  this  institution  is  to  rear  the  undesired  chil- 
dren of  Buenos  Ayres.  An  exposito  is  a  foundling, 
and  this  is  the  Foundling  Hospital  of  Buenos  Ayres. 
Unwilling  mothers  bring  their  offspring  here,  leave 
them  at  the  door,  where  they  are  willingly  received 
"  and  no  questions  asked."  The  state  does  not 
despise  this  means  of  fostering  the  population,  though 
it  leaves  many  thousands  of  infants  to  die  annually  for 
lack  of  popular  instruction  on  the  rearing  of  the  young 
and  also  by  permitting  the  continuance  of  social  condi- 
tions which  make  the  survival  of  most  children  of  the 
labouring  class  something  of  a  miracle. 

When  the  station  of  the  Central  Argentine  Railway 
at  Retiro  has  been  completed,  Buenos  Ayres  will  pos- 
sess one  of  the  finest  railway  buildings  in  the  world, 
but  during  my  stay  the  termini  of  that  railway  and  the 
B.  A.  P.  were  no  better  than  some  of  the  shabbier 
country  stations  in  the  United  States,  though  the 


ioo  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Southern,  at  Plaza  Constitucion,  has  a  handsome  edifice, 
and  the  Western,  at  Plaza  Once,  quite  a  presentable 
railway  station. 

And  talking  of  railway  stations,  I  shall  make  this 
the  end  of  my  journey  round  the  public  buildings  of 
Buenos  Ayres  —  at  least  for  the  present.  I  have  not 
sought  to  do  more  than  to  give  the  reader  —  as  in  the 
fleeting  glimpses  of  a  strange  land  from  the  window  of 
a  speeding  train  —  a  rapid  outline  of  the  material 
Buenos  Ayres.  This  splendid  city  of  sham !  If  I  may 
not  appear  to  have  been  deeply  impressed  with  its 
beauties  which  have  been  so  floridly  pictured  by  more 
partial  pens,  that  is  probably  because  I  have  sought  to 
bear  in  mind  there  are  other  great  cities  in  the  world. 
To  the  untravelled  British  provincial,  who  has  shipped 
straight  from  some  English  port  to  the  River  Plate, 
I  can  well  imagine  the  Argentine  metropolis  is  the  great- 
est wonder  of  the  world.  The  most  devoted  admirer 
of  Buenos  Ayres  that  I  met  during  my  stay  there  was  a 
gentleman  from  Kilmarnock,  Scotland.  He  had  never 
seen  London;  had  never  previously  been  out  of  his 
native  Scotland;  but  his  ten  years  in  the  Argentine  capi- 
tal had  convinced  him  that  it  stood  unique  in  the  world 
and  in  all  time  as  the  most  glorious  example  of  the 
power  of  man  in  the  making  of  cities.  That  renegade 
Scot,  I  quite  believe,  looks  forward  with  satisfaction 
to  living  out  his  life  there  and  being  hurried  one  day, 
some  twenty  hours  after  he  dies,  to  the  sweet  rest  of 
Chacarita !  But  he  is  a  type  one  may  easily  allow 
for  (I  always  show  a  marked  approval  of  their  well- 
seasoned  opinions)  and  pass  on.  The  intelligent 
writer,  however,  who  so  often,  from  hasty  observation 


A  SPLENDID  CITY  OF:  SHAM*  101 

or  from  interested  motives,  conveys  a  too  flattering  <m-'- 
pression  of  a  town  does  incompai'ably^mofe  harm  than 
a  whole  wilderness  of  inexperienced  and  unobservant 
enthusiasts.  So  many  such  writers  have  already  de- 
scribed the  outward  show  of  Buenos  Ayres  as  a  sun 
without  spots,  that  my  observations  may  at  least  re- 
store the  spots.  They  are  set  down  in  all  honesty 
and  with  no  desire  to  belittle  the  truly  commendable 
things  of  Buenos  Ayres,  in  appraising  which  I  trust  I 
shall  not  be  held  guilty  of  any  niggard  spirit.  But, 
after  all,  the  buildings  of  any  city  are  no  more  than  the 
husk,  and  though  we  must  break  the  shell  to  come  at 
the  kernel,  it  is  on  the  latter  we  have  our  mind  in  the 
progress  of  the  operation.  Thus  I  am  in  these  chap- 
ters on  the  outward  appearance  of  Buenos  Ayres  en- 
gaged in  nothing  more  than  the  breaking  of  the  shell  — 
and  perhaps  a  few  well-established  illusions  at  the  same 
time. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SOME    "  PASEOS  "    IN   AND   ABOUT    BUENOS   AYRES 

A  PASEO  signifies  no  more  than  a  stroll,  a  walk,  a 
promenade.  But  the  modern  Argentine  usually  goes 
a-strolling  in  a  coche  or  a  motor-car.  He  has  an  in- 
grain horror  of  exercising  his  legs.  The  British  resi- 
dent soon  falls  into  this  modern  manner,  either  out  of  a 
frank  desire  to  ruffle  it  with  the  best  of  them  or  merely 
because  one  must  eventually  follow  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance. It  demands  a  certain  amount  of  will-power 
to  walk  when  all  the  world's  on  wheels.  Thus,  as 
there  is  but  a  single  paseo  where  one  can  display  one's 
gorgeous  motor-car,  or  hired  carriage,  all  the  world 
makes  for  that  and  stares  at  everybody  else.  Palermo  ! 
Oh,  potent  word  to  local  minds !  Palermo  is  the  one 
paseo  known  to  all.  In  that  one  word  is  summed  up 
most  of  what  the  citizens  of  Buenos  Ayres  know  of 
outdoor  enjoyment.  There  are  other  paseos  that  do 
not  call  for  a  coche ;  where  you  don't  go  merely  to  look 
at  the  crowd  and  be  looked  at;  consequently  these  are 
left  to  the  stray  visitor  or  the  Gringo,  who  knows  no 
better. 

But  first  let  us  talk  of  Palermo.  It  is  as  Hyde  Park 
to  London,  as  the  Bois  to  Paris.  And  it  is  an  infinitely 
greater  source  of  pride  to  the  Buenos-Ayrian  than 
Hyde  Park  to  the  Londoner  or  the  Bois  to  the  Parisian. 
I  met  a  young  English  lady  who  had  been  brought  to 
the  River  Plate  as  a  child  and  after  growing  to  woman- 

102 


"  PASEOS  "  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      103 

hood  had  returned  to  England  for  a  year  or  two,  but 
had  now  come  back  to  Buenos  Ayres  again.  "  I  just 
love  Palermo,"  she  said  ecstatically.  '  It  is  unique; 
there  is  nothing  like  it  in  all  London."  I  received  the 
information  with  due  humility. 

Palermo  consists  of  a  mile  or  so  of  carriage  drive- 
way which  is  level  and  tarred  (differing  in  these  re- 
spects from  every  other  bit  of  road  in  the  Argentine), 
a  pond  or  two,  and  some  trees.  Materially,  that  is  all. 
But  it  is  in  the  spirit  of  Palermo  that  lies  its  fascina- 
tion, and  it  may  truly  be  said  of  it  that  "  for  those  who 
like  this  sort  of  thing  it  is  just  the  sort  of  thing  they 
will  like,"  as  will  presently  appear  when  I  endeavour 
to  describe  that  spirit.  No,  outwardly  there  is  noth- 
ing quite  like  it  in  London,  nor  in  New  York:  the  drive- 
ways in  Hyde  Park  or  in  Central  Park  are  immensely 
smoother,  the  lawns  are  incomparably  more  velvety, 
the  trees  more  umbrageous,  while  a  dozen  or  more 
Palermos  could  be  cut  out  of  a  corner  of  the  Fair- 
mount  Park,  Philadelphia,  without  noticing  the  loss! 
But  all  that  is  by  the  way.  Palermo  is  not  to  be 
sneered  at  as  the  lung  of  a  stifling  city.  There  are  in- 
stances of  people  going  along  quite  well  with  but  one 
lung.  The  man  with  one  lung,  however,  has  scant  rea- 
son for  crowing  over  his  normal  fellow-creatures. 

Palermo,  taken  at  what  it  is  and  eschewing  com- 
parisons, is  very  fine  and  reflects  the  highest  credit  on 
the  municipal  authorities  of  Buenos  Ayres.  They 
have  done  wonders  with  the  most  unpromising  ma- 
terial. Yet  as  it  stands  to-day  it  is  nothing,  I  believe, 
to  what  it  is  likely  to  become. 

To  reach  this  haunt  of  River  Plate  fashion  you  will 


104  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

hire  a  coche  (taking  care  to  select  one  of  the  minority 
that  are  cleanly  upholstered  and  well-horsed)  or  you 
may  engage  a  motor-car,  for  there  is  an  abundance  of 
splendid  automobiles  to  be  hired  by  the  hour,  with 
nothing  but  the  tell-tale  taximeter  to  show  that  it  is  not 
a  luxurious  private  car.  Or  you  may  take  either  train 
or  trolley  car.  Nor  is  it  any  great  distance  to  walk 
thither  from  the  centre  of  the  town.  I  have  gone 
every  way,  for  after  a  time  it  becomes  "  the  only  thing 
to  do,"  and  when  you  have  reached  that  stage  you  al- 
most invariably  take  a  coche.  The  favourite  route  is 
by  way  of  the  Plaza  San  Martin  and  the  Avenida  Al- 
vear,  the  Fifth  Avenue  of  Buenos  Ayres.  The  district 
lying  between  the  Plaza  and  Recoleta  is  the  most 
fashionable  residential  quarter,  and  along  the  fine 
Avenida  Alvear  stand  many  of  the  most  beautiful  pri- 
vate mansions  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Here  for  the  first 
time  in  wandering  about  the  town  one  notes  hardly  any 
intermingling  of  the  ostentatious  and  the  mean. 
Everywhere  else  that  strikes  the  observer  most 
forcibly  —  the  extraordinary  way  in  which  the  palace 
is  placed  alongside  the  hovel,  so  that,  separated  only 
by  a  matter  of  two  or  three  feet  of  distance  and  the 
thickness  of  a  wall,  may  be  a  group  of  thieves  discuss- 
ing their  affairs  over  drinks  in  an  evil-smelling  "  dive  " 
and  a  perfumed  gathering  of  distinguidos.  Time,  of 
course,  will  cure  this  in  the  older  quarters  of  the  town, 
but  the  indifference  to  the  nature  of  one's  neighbours 
is  evidently  deep-rooted,  as  in  the  Avenida  Alvear  it- 
self there  is  at  least  one  very  common  drinking  saloon 
in  the  lower  part  of  a  handsome  new  building,  and  fur- 
ther out  toward  Palermo  a  fine  new  block  of  flats  is 


"  PASEOS  "  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      105 

disfigured  by  a  noisy  bar  on  the  street  level.  On  the 
whole,  however,  this  district  is  so  free  from  the  lower 
class  of  trades  people  and  the  meaner  sort  of  building 
that  in  this  respect  it  reminds  one  of  the  aristocratic 
quarter  of  any  great  European  town. 

The  Plaza  San  Martin  is  a  noble  square,  plentifully 
studded  with  trees,  flowering  shrubs  and  flower  beds. 
The  grass  is  coarse  and  scraggy,  the  close-cropped, 
velvety  lawn  being  here  impossible  of  attainment  owing 
to  natural  difficulties  of  soil  and  weather.  In  the  cen- 
tre of  the  plaza  stands  a  splendid  monument  to  the 
national  hero.  It  is  of  the  familiar  equestrian  type, 
showing  San  Martin,  astride  the  usual  prancing  steed, 
pointing  with  his  right  hand  to  the  path  that  leads  to 
glory  or  the  grave.  The  statue,  a  very  spirited  work, 
stands  on  a  high  pedestal  of  granite,  in  front  of  which 
a  fine  figure  of  a  Roman  warrior  is  seated  holding  aloft 
an  oak  branch,  while  four  other  bronze  groups  typify- 
ing military  prowess  and  victory,  each  in  itself  a  con- 
siderable monument,  occupy  granite  pedestals  at  the 
extreme  corners  of  the  widespreading  sculptured  base. 
Inset  in  the  main  pedestal  are  battle  groups  in  high 
relief  and  the  lower  parts  of  the  stonework  are  also 
enriched  with  many  similar  panels  of  smaller  size,  in 
which  the  stirring  events  of  South  America's  struggle 
for  independence,  so  little  known  in  North  America  or 
in  Europe,  are  vigorously  depicted.  Withal,  a  very 
handsome  and  worthy  memorial,  of  enduring  stone 
and  bronze.  In  art  and  craft  it  is  French,  having  been 
transported  from  France  with  much  ceremony  and  at 
no  small  cost.  It  is  a  noteworthy  ornament  of  the 
city;  a  legitimate  source  of  pride  to  the  patriotic. 


io6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

The  sculpture  mania  has  Buenos  Ayres  in  its  grip. 
The  Latin  peoples  have  ever  been  more  partial  to  that 
art  than  the  Anglo-Saxon,  but  the  Argentines  are  in 
danger  of  touching  an  extreme  that  borders  on  the 
foolish.  Here  in  the  Plaza  San  Martin  there  are  two 
more  groups  —  in  marble  these  —  one  being  a  very 
striking  work  indeed,  entitled  La  Doute.  It  stands 
near  the  southeast  corner  of  the  plaza  and  is  so 
shadowed  by  trees  that  it  baffled  all  my  efforts  to  secure 
a  really  good  photograph  of  it.  A  little  reminiscent 
of  the  Rodin  manner  —  Rodin  is  one  of  the  gods  of  the 
Buenos  Ayrians  —  this  work  represents  a  great  mus- 
cular young  man,  semi-nude,  with  perplexed  brow,  pon- 
dering a  book,  to  which  an  old  wizened  figure  points 
with  skinny  finger  while  he  peers  into  the  face  of  the 
young  man.  "Doubt"  is  writ  large  thereon;  but 
whether  the  old  man  seeks  to  dispel  the  doubt  or  is  the 
cause  thereof  I  am  myself  in  doubt.  His  old  face  al- 
ways reminded  me  of  the  bust  of  Voltaire  in  the  Louvre. 
Perhaps  there's  a  clue  in  that.  The  other  group  is 
called  Los  primer os  frios  (The  first  cold  winds)  and 
represents  a  naked  old  man  seated  with  a  naked  child 
at  his  knee.  It  always  impressed  me  as  a  peculiarly 
stupid  work,  though  technically  good,  and  beyond  re- 
minding perspiring  humanity  in  the  suffocating  summer 
time  that  there  are  occasions  when  the  cold  winds  blow, 
I  can  imagine  no  good  purpose  that  it  serves. 

Another  feature  of  the  plaza  is  an  artificial  rockery 
which,  with  another  of  the  same,  though  somewhat 
higher,  in  the  Plaza  Constitucion,  is  the  only  thing  in 
the  shape  of  a  mountain  for  scores  of  miles  round  about 
Buenos  Ayres ! 


BEDROOM  OF  DISTINGUISHED  VISITORS'  SUITE  IN  "  PRENSA 

OFFICE. 


THE  GORGEOUSLY  DECORATED  SALON  IN  THE  "PRENSA"  OFFICE. 


"  PASEOS  "  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      107 

Such  is  the  Plaza  San  Martin  —  as  handsome  a  pub- 
lic square  as  you  will  find  in  any  great  city.  The  pity 
is  that  it  is  frequented  chiefly  by  riff-raff,  and  the  foot- 
ways being  laid  with  tiny  pebbles,  one  would  fain  don 
his  golf-shoes  to  walk  thereon.  It  is  surrounded  by  a 
series  of  private  palaces,  notably  those  of  Mihanovich, 
a  millionaire  whose  life-story  is  a  romance,  and  that 
of  the  Paz  family,  already  mentioned. 

We  continue  towards  Palermo  by  the  Avenida  Al- 
vear,  noting  the  many  mansions  on  the  way  jn  which 
good  taste  and  vulgar  ostentation  often  stand  side  by 
side,  though,  on  the  whole,  good  taste  prevails.  These 
gorgeous  homes  are  frequently  left  to  the  care  of  a  few 
servants  for  twelve  months  on  end,  as  the  wealthy 
Argentine  says  to  his  native  town,  "  I  could  not  love 
thee,  dear,  so  much,  loved  I  not  Paris  more  I  "  And 
while  he  does  homage  to  his  homeland  by  adorning  the 
Avenida  Alvear  with  a  palatial  residence,  he  spends 
most  of  his  time  in  Paris  —  and  I  don't  blame  him. 
The  late  Dr.  Paz  lived  for  twenty  years  on  the  Riviera 
and  there  he  died.  Good  Americans,  'tis  said,  go  to 
Paris  when  they  die.  Wealthy  South  Americans  go  to 
Paris  when  they  live  and  are  brought  back  to  Buenos 
Ayres  when  they  die ! 

The  Avenida  Alvear  is  wide  and  well  paved  with 
wooden  sets.  In  the  afternoons  there  is  a  continuous 
stream  of  vehicles,  and  on  Sundays  a  more  animated 
thoroughfare  could  not  be  imagined.  Motor-cars  in- 
numerable go  scudding  along  without  a  thought  of 
speed  limit,  tinkling  coches,  splendid  carriages  and 
pairs,  and  the  scrubbiest  Victorias  and  the  mangiest 
teams  you  ever  set  eyes  on.  Mounted  police  are  sta- 


io8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tioned  at  different  points,  not  so  much  to  "  direct  " 
the  traffic  as  to  act  as  living  landmarks  for  the  drivers, 
all  of  whom  seem  bent  on  getting  somewhere  first, 
though  there  is  not  the  least  occasion  for  hurry,  unless 
they  are  bound  for  the  race-course,  as  in  half  an  hour 
they  will  have  gone  the  whole  distance  that  can  be  cov- 
ered in  comfort.  We  two  Gringos  used  to  spend 
many  pleasant  hours  sitting  in  the  little  green  garden 
by  the  Palais  de  Glace,  near  Recoleta  station,  watching 
the  varied  throng  go  by,  but  that  was  not  "  the  thing 
to  do,"  bless  you,  as  our  only  companions  were  nurse- 
maids and  rough  labouring  men.  On  the  south  side 
of  the  Avenida,  however,  are  other  and  much  larger 
gardens,  where  those  who  are  not  ambitious  to  lucirse 
(or  "  show  off  ")  at  Palermo,  are  wont  to  sit  or 
promenade.  And  very  attractive  are  these  gardens, 
with  their  winding  walks,  their  lakelets,  and  shrub- 
beries. Those  at  the  Plaza  Francia  are  particu- 
larly favoured  by  the  toilers  on  Sunday  afternoon, 
though  the  view  across  the  Avenida  to  the  waterworks 
is  somewhat  of  an  eyesore.  In  the  Plaza  Francia 
the  French  u  colony  "  have  erected  a  fine  monument 
to  the  Argentine  Republic,  as  a  recuerdo  of  the  cen- 
tenary in  1910.  At  the  back  of  the  plaza  is  a  long 
and  substantial-looking  balustrade.  We  thought  this 
must  lead  to  "  somewhere  beyond  " —  full  of  groves 
and  tinkling  fountains !  We  ascended  one  hot  day, 
to  find  that  it  led  nowhere,  and  was  made  of  bricks 
and  stucco,  and  although  still  unfinished  it  had  already 
fallen  into  decay. 

So  we  continue  our  paseo,  be  it  in  coche  or  afoot, 
along   Alvear,    passing,    as   we   near    Palermo,    many 


"  PASEOS  "  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      109 

shanty-like  structures  which  must  soon  disappear  and 
many  unsightly  remains  of  the  Centennial  Exhibition. 
This  last  was  opened  and  closed  in  the  year  1910,  but 
at  the  end  of  1912  numerous  ruined  pavilions  still 
cumbered  the  ground.  One  place  near  here  u.sed  to 
amuse  me.  It  was  a  shabby  pleasure  resort  named 
"  Harmenonville."  Memories  of  that  delightful 
bower  in  the  Bois  de  Bologne  always  came  back  to  me 
when  I  looked  at  this,  "  with  laughter  of  gods  in  the 
background."  And  now,  we  find  ourselves  at  a  great 
dusty  meeting  of  wide  roads.  On  the  left  is  the  en- 
trance to  the  Zoological  Gardens,  to  the  right  the 
woods  of  Palermo,  with  their  pines  and  eucalyptus 
trees,  suggestive  of  unfathomed  forest  within,  while 
ahead  the  broad  road  continues,  now  noisy  with  tram 
cars  coming  and  going  from  the  race-course  and  by 
the  Avenida  Sarmiento  that  runs  southwest  to  the 
Plaza  Italia. 

The  woods  on  the  right  invite  us  by  their  coolness 
and  apparent  depth.  They  prove,  however,  a  mere 
strip  of  trees,  and  we  seldom  encounter  decent-look- 
ing people  among  them.  But  there  is  no  lack  of 
promenade  ground  in  the  direction  of  the  lakes,  whither 
every  vehicle  of  every  kind  is  heading.  And  there, 
beyond  the  great  tea-room,  the  Pabellon  de  los  lagos, 
the  real  paseo  begins.  Along  the  driveway  by  the 
margin  of  the  lakes  there  is,  on  Sunday  afternoons 
especially,  an  extraordinary  crowd  of  vehicles.  All 
have  to  move  at  a  snail's  pace,  directed  by  many 
mounted  police,  who,  posted  in  the  middle  of  the  road- 
way, keep  the  traffic  into  two  orderly  streams,  one  go- 
ing, the  other  returning,  while  alongside  the  footpath 


no  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

stands  a  row  of  carriages,  whose  owners  or  hirers  may 
either  be  seated  within,  staring  at  every  other  carriage 
that  passes,  or,  greatly  daring,  may  be  venturing  a  few 
paces  on  foot  beside  the  lakes,  where  sundry  low 
Italians  are  enjoying  themselves  rowdily  in  the  gon- 
dolas, and  dreaming  themselves  back  in  Venice  —  if, 
perchance,  they  are  strong  in  dreams. 

This  is  Palermo.  For  this  all  the  monstrous  noise 
of  motor  "  cut-outs  "  and  every  devilish  variety  of 
"  hooter "  along  Alvear,  all  the  brutal  lashing  of 
perspiring  horses.  For  this!  The  dresses  of  the 
ladies  in  the  carriages  are  la  ultima  palabra  and  their 
wearers  sit  as  stiff  and  expressionless  as  the  wax  man- 
nequins in  the  windows  of  the  Florida  modistas.  They 
recognise  their  friends  with  a  slight  inclination  of  the 
neck,  but  show  no  sign  of  pleasure.  The  gilded  youths 
in  groups  of  threes  or  fours,  with  their  boots  polished 
to  solar  brilliancy,  go  by  in  hired  motors  or  in  coches 
(the  latter  have  the  merit  of  showing  off  the  boots  to 
advantage)  and  stare  at  the  llndas  muchachas  whom 
they  do  not  know,  and  doff  their  hats  with  profoundest 
bows  to  those  they  do  know.  And  so  it  goes  on  for 
an  hour  or  two,  then  towards  five  or  half-past  five,  the 
throng  begins  to  lessen,  the  returning  vehicles  continue 
townward  at  increased  speed  when  they  have  come 
back  for  the  last  time  to  the  beginning  of  the  carriage- 
drive,  and  by  six  o'clock  the  fashionable  throng  has 
melted  away,  leaving  Palermo  to  the  prowlers  and 
the  stragglers  once  again.  What  strikes  the  spec- 
tator is  the  appalling  respectability  of  it  all,  the 
gravity  of  the  paseantes,  the  lack  of  vulgarity  and 


"PASEOS"  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      in 

gladness.  It  is  all  a  pose,  for  I  have  seen  these  same 
charmingly  dressed  ladies  who  look  so  frightfully  for- 
mal on  Sunday  afternoons,  all  smiles  and  merriment 
on  the  evenings  of  the  Corso  de  flores,  or  the  Battle 
of  Flowers,  which  takes  place  at  Palermo  in  aid  of  pub- 
lic charities  in  the  month  of  November.  It  is  "  the 
thing  "  to  be  seen  taking  a  paseo  at  Palermo  and  as 
there  is  nothing  so  serious  in  this  strange  life  of  ours 
than  our  social  obligations,  we  must  needs  discharge 
them  with  due  gravity.  But  what  a  comedy  it  all  is 
for  the  spectator  who  has  no  obligations  to  local  So- 
ciety ! 

The  paseo  by  the  ponds  (it  is  gross  flattery  to  call 
them  lagos,  but  estanque,  which  signifies  "  pond,1'  is  not 
so  pretty  a  word  as  lago)  is  by  no  means  the  end  of 
Palermo's  possibilities  to  the  wanderer  in  Buenos 
Ayres,  though  it  is  so  to  the  residents.  Near  by  is  the 
Zoological  Garden,  which  extends  from  the  Avenida 
Alvear  to  the  Plaza  Italia,  on  the  great  highway 
of  Santa  Fe.  But  one  does  not  visit  this  often.  It 
contains  a  large  and  interesting  collection  of  wild  ani- 
mals and  is  well  laid  out,  but  badly  kept.  In  the  sum- 
mer months  it  is  disagreeably  dusty  and  on  Sundays  it 
is  so  crowded  by  low  class  Italians  and  the  unwashed 
of  all  nations,  that  one  feels  all  the  wild  animals  are 
not  in  cages.  I  noticed  many  of  the  lions,  tigers  and 
larger  beasts  had  ugly  sores,  the  result  of  insect 
trouble,  I  was  told,  and  one  of  the  most  abomin- 
able sights  I  have  ever  seen  was  witnessed  here.  In 
a  large  pound  was  a  troup  of  poor  worn  old  horses 
and  ponies,  wandering  aimlessly  about.  A  more 


ii2  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ghastly  collection  of  living  creatures  could  not  be 
conceived.  These  were  the  food  for  the  lions  and  the 
tigers.  Faugh ! 

Separated  from  the  Zoological  Garden  by  a  spacious 
avenida  —  General  Las  Heras,  if  I  remember  cor- 
rectly—  and  occupying  a  small  triangular  plot  of 
ground  extending  townwards  from  the  Plaza  Italia 
is  the  Botanical  Garden.  It  contains  many  specimens 
of  American  flora  and  has  a  few  hothouses  full  of 
tropical  plants;  but  it  is  of  no  real  account  botanically 
and  is  more  useful  as  a  place  of  grateful  greenness  and 
shade,  retired  a  little  from  the  dust  and  noise  of  the 
streets,  where  one  may  idle  an  hour  away  with  pipe  and 
book. 

Then,  of  course,  there  is  the  great  race-course  or 
Hipodromo  Argentina,  only  a  little  way  beyond  the 
Parque  3  de  Febrero,  as  the  whole  park,  of  which 
Palermo  proper  is  only  a  part,  is  named.  The  race- 
course is,T  opine,  one  of  the  largest  in  the  world.  It 
is  very  pleasantly  situated  and  maintained  in  admirable 
condition;  but  it  has  the  defect  of  being  so  large,  or 
so  designed,  that  the  race  as  a  whole  cannot  be  fol- 
lowed uninterruptedly  from  any  of  the  "  grandstands  " 
or  tribunas.  These  are  well  built  and  extremely  com- 
modious. There  is  a  particularly  gorgeous  erection 
for  the  distinguished  persons  associated  with  the 
Jockey  Club,  and  this  is  naturally  alongside  of  the  pad- 
dock. Next  to  it  is  a  larger  stand  for  the  public  who 
pay  seven  pesos  a  head,  and  beyond  are  the  tribunas 
popular es  for  the  mob.  As  the  Paris  mutuel  system, 
or  "  totalisator  "  is  used  for  regulating  the  betting,  the 
"  bookie  "  is  unknown  here.  There  are  many  ticket 


A  CONTRAST  IN  PUBLIC  BUILDINGS. 

The  upper  illustration  depicts  the  tawdry  old  exhibition  pavilion  which  Buenos  Ayres 
is  content  to  use  as  an  Art  Gallery,  and  the  lower  the  splendid  offices  of  the  Public 
Waterworks. 


"PASEOS"  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      113 

offices,  each  bearing  a  number,  and  you  merely  go  to 
the  one  that  has  the  number  of  the  horse  you  wish  to 
"  back,"  buy  as  many  tickets  "  for  a  win  and  a  place  " 
as  your  fancy  or  your  pocket  dictates,  return  to  the 
stand,  and  await  results !  These  offices  are  in  different 
series:  one  series  only  issues  tickets  of  ten  pesos,  an- 
other of  five,  and  a  third  of^tep.  After  a  race,  if 
your  horse  has  won  or  been  ^^laced,"  you  go  to  a 
paying-out  office,  present  your  tickets  and  there  receive 
your  winnings  at  the  rate  which  was  announced  on  the 
large  notice  board  near  the  grand-stand  after  the  money 
on  that  particular  race  had  been  apportioned,  which, 
being  done  by  mechanical  calculation,  occupies  very  lit- 
tle time.  You  will  almost  certainly  have  a  few  hot 
words  with  the  man  at  the  box-office,  as  he  will  try  to 
swindle  you  out  of  a  portion  of  your  gains,  trusting  to 
the  confusion  of  the  moment  to  cover  up  his  fraud. 
On  the  whole,  the  system  is  about  as  good  a  way  for 
losing  one's  money  as  our  Stock  Exchange,  and  it  does 
possess  an  element  of  "  sport "  which  the  latter  seems 
to  me  to  lack. 

We  knew  as  much  about  the  horses  running  at 
Palermo  as  our  maiden  aunt,  but  we  stuck  to  our  lucky 
number  and  always  "  got  home."  A  sporting  gentleman 
who  was  with  us  on  one  occasion  and  knew  the  history 
of  every  horse  for  generations  back,  lost  so  heavily 
that  on  one  race  he  joined  my  wife  and  me  on  our 
lucky  number !  The  horse  arrived  last ;  but  —  will  you 
believe  me?  —  by  some  strange  error  of  the  judge,  it 
was  given  a  place  and  we  drew  so  substantial  a  dividend 
on  it  that  the  sporting  gentleman  —  who  "  plunged  " 
all  he  had  left  on  it  —  squared  his  losses !  There  was 


ii4  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

a  great  how-d'ye-do  in  the  papers  about  the  mistake, 
but  it  shows  you  the  value  of  having  a  lucky  number, 
rather  than  being  versed  in  the  "  form  "  of  the  horses! 
Talking  of  the  matter  with  a  member  of  the  Jockey 
Club,  he  told  me  that  on  one  occasion  he  was  present 
when  the  winning  horse  passed  so  much  ahead  of  the 
others  and  so  close  under  the  judge's  box  that  the  judge 
didn't  see  it !  The  JocKey  Club  conducts  the  races  and 
the  betting,  paying  a  certain  percentage  of  its  enormous 
gains  to  charities.  As  for  the  public,  although  pres- 
ent at  the  races  in  their  thousands,  they  seemed  to 
have  no  healthy  interest  in  the  horses,  but  were  there 
with  solemn,  hard,  joyless  faces  to  make  money.  Yet 
we  are  told  horse-racing  is  the  national  "  sport  "  of 
the  Argentine.  The  liveliest  scene  is  when  the  last 
race  is  over  and  the  multitude  fight  for  seats  on  tram- 
cars,  while  the  lucky  ones  swagger  back  to  town  in 
their  hired  vehicles.  Very  few  women  are  to  be  seen; 
certainly  not  five  per  cent,  of  the  crowd.  A  few  of 
the  mundo  elegante  may  be  noted  in  the  Jockey  Club 
enclosure,  but  the  demi-mondame,  so  eminent  and  at- 
tractive at  Longchamps,  is  rigorously  debarred.  In- 
deed, you  will  search  in  vain  at  the  Palermo  races  for 
any  real  signs  of  gaiety  or  sport. 

Beyond  the  Hipodromo  lies  the  golf-course.  The 
club  has  been  specially  favoured  by  the  generosity  of 
Senor  Tornquist,  a  great  local  landowner,  and  is  pa- 
tronised by  natives  and  foreigners  alike,  the  Argentine 
being  very  emulative  of  the  English  in  all  their  national 
sports  and  at  heart  he  is  "  a  good  sport."  The  course, 
though  only  containing  nine  holes,  is  well  laid  out  and 
is  most  interesting.  I  recall  with  pleasure  the  few 


"PASEOS"  IN  AND  ABOUT  BUENOS  AYRES      115 

rounds  I  made  there  and  also  the  ample  hospitality  of 
one  of  the  finest  .club-houses  I  have  ever  visited. 

Between  the  race-course  and  the  golf,  there  is  a  fine 
riding  track,  and  near  the  station  named  "  Golf  "  are 
some  spacious  tennis  courts,  where  energetic  natives, 
as  well  as  Britishers  and  Americans,  practise  that 
vigorous  pastime.  Football,  too,  and  cricket  are 
played  near  here  and  at  Belgrano,  and  it  is  a  common 
sight  at  Palermo  to  witness  some  of  the  military 
aviators  practising;  so  that,  on  the  whole,  the  sportively 
inclined  need  not  be  unoccupied  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and 
if  there  is  little  that  invites  the  visitor  to  a  paseo  in 
the  town,  Palermo  has  always  something  to  offer  on 
Sundays  at  least. 


CHAPTER  IX 

MORE    "  PASEOS  "    IN   BUENOS   AYRES 

RECOLETA  I  have  only  mentioned  in  passing;  but  that 
offers  a  very  interesting  paseo  to  the  visitor.  My  wife 
specialised  on  Recoleta  and  piloted  many  another 
lonely  soul  to  that  strange  city  of  tombs!  As  they 
say  in  Scottish  villages,  "  Let's  take  a  bit  daunder  in 
the  kirk  yaird."  Recoleta  is  certainly  worthy  of  a 
"  daunder."  This  famous  cemetery  combines  some 
features  of  Pere  Lachaise  with  certain  of  the  Campo 
Santo  at  Genoa.  But  it  is  really  not  like  either.  It  is 
peculiarly  Argentine.  You  can  trace  in  it  the  progress 
of  the  national  prosperity.  It  is  essentially  the  crea- 
tion of  a  people  newly  rich.  Here  and  there  we  see 
in  its  crowded  lines  of  tombs  some  mouldering  memo- 
rial of  the  last  generation,  simple,  unpretentious.  But 
most  of  those  that  bear  dates  within  the  last  twenty 
years  or  so  are  the  last  word  in  necrological  "  swank  " 
or  mortuary  pomp.  Not  for  nothing  are  funerals 
styled  pampas  funebres  in  the  Argentine.  They  do 
well  by  their  dead.  Millions  of  money  have  gone  to 
the  making  of  these  splendid  homes  of  the  dead  at 
Recoleta.  For  they  are  not  buried  in  our  "  earth  to 
earth  "  fashion.  The  bodies  are  merely  encased  in 
leaden  shells,  within  gorgeous  coffins  of  carved  wood, 
and  are  laid  on  shelves  within  the  mausoleums,  so  that 
for  years  to  come  the  survivors  may  visit  the  tomb  and 
mourn  with  no  more  than  the  thickness  of  the  coffin  be- 

116 


MORE  "PASEOS"  IN  BUENOS  AYRES      117 

tween  them  and  the  departed.  It  is  a  horribly  un- 
sanitary system  of  burial  and  the  smell  in  Recoleta 
on  a  hot  summer's  day  is  distinctly  u  high."  How 
could  it  be  else,  with  all  these  thousands  of  decaying 
corpses  enclosed  in  boxes  which,  you  may  be  sure,  are 
not  all  air-tight?  So  intolerable  is  the  savour  of  the 
dead,  that  the  custodians  —  the  cemetery  pululates  with 
uniformed  custodians  —  have  to  "  air  "  the  tombs  by 
opening  the  doors  for  several  hours  daily.  When  I 
went  wandering  in  Recoleta,  I  used  to  think  that 
Jacque's  words  — 

"  And  so,  from  hour  to  hour  we  ripe  and  ripe 
And  then,  from  hour  to  hour,  we  rot  and  rot " — 

would  make  a  good  motto  for  the  place.  How  Shake- 
speare has  a  tag  for  everything,  old  and  new! 

But  I  must  describe  a  typical  tomb.  It  is  built  en- 
tirely of  beautiful  Carrara  marble,  and  better  built 
than  most  houses  in  Buenos  Ayres.  No  "  sham  "  here. 
It  towers  nearly  twenty  feet  above  the  ground  level,  and 
its  lower  floor  is  eight  or  ten  feet  underground.  It  is 
beautifully  designed,  with  delicately  carved  pilasters, 
and  surmounted  by  a  graceful  cupola,  bearing  a  decora- 
tive cross.  The  spacious  entrance  is  fitted  with  a  noble 
iron-work  gate,  lined  on  the  inner  side  with  plate  glass, 
and  bearing  on  a  gilded  boss  in  the  centre  the  Christ- 
mark  £  so  familiar  in  all  Latin  cemeteries.  In  a  word, 
save  for  the  cross  and  the  Christ-mark,  it  is  outwardly 
such  a  monument  as  the  wealthy  Roman  reared  by  the 
Appian  Way,  and  surely  there  must  be  in  Recoleta  as 
many  of  these  vanities  as  made  that  highway  one  of 
the  great  sights  of  Imperial  Rome. 


n8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Let  us  peep  within.  In  the  upper  chamber  stands 
an  elaborate  altar  of  alabaster  and  brass,  with  an 
enamelled  painting  of  the  Virgin  and  Holy  Child,  en- 
cased in  a  massive  frame  of  brass,  before  which,  on 
the  lace  altar-cloth,  spotlessly  clean,  are  burning  sev- 
eral candles.  There  are  two  or  three  prie-dieus  of 
mahogany  and  various  wreaths  of  real  flowers  hung 
on  the  walls,  as  well  as  others  of  beads  or  immortelles. 
Below,  down  a  flight  of  marble  stairs  with  brass 
balustrades,  one  can  see  on  shelves  around  the  cham- 
ber, six,  eight,  perchance  a  dozen  coffins,  and  several 
marble  busts,  portraits  of  the  more  notable  occupants 
of  the  coffins,  placed  on  pedestals,  against  which  are 
heaped  more  wreaths.  Every  detail  of  the  tomb  is 
perfect  in  its  way  and  no  expense  has  been  spared  in 
the  making  of  it.  It  is  scrupulously  clean,  for  here 
come  dainty  ladies  to  kneel  on  the  praying  chairs  for 
an  hour  at  a  time,  and  on  All  Souls'  Day  or  the  Day 
of  the  Dead  (El  dia  de  los  muertes)  the  family  inter- 
ested in  the  tomb  will  pass  most  of  the  day  here.  Fif- 
teen thousand  dollars  would  probably  be  a  fair  esti- 
mate of  the  cost  of  this  little  palace  of  death  —  a  few 
square  yards  in  one  of  the  main  avenues  of  Recoleta 
will  outvalue  the  same  space  in  Florida !  —  but  it  re- 
mains a  charnel  house  and  it  smelleth  of  things  un- 
clean. I  often  thought  that  the  mourning  ladies  seen 
in  these  tombs  were  another  of  the  many  traces  of  the 
Moorish  dominion  in  Spain  that  still  show  in  the  cus- 
toms of  Spanish  America. 

When  I  tell  you  that  in  Recoleta  there  are  some  ten 
thousand  tombs,  huddled  together  so  closely  that  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  get  an  unembarrassed  view  of  a 


THE  ENGLISH  "PRO-CATHEDRAL"  IN  CALLE  25  DE  MAYO, 
BUENOS  AYRES. 


THE  ROMAN  CATHOLIC  CATHEDRAL  IN  THE  PLAZA  MAYO, 
BUENOS  AYRES. 

(Note  the  wreaths  of  electric  bulbs  which  permanently  entwine  the  columns 
of  the  building.) 


MORE  "PASEOS"  IN  BUENOS  AYRES       119 

single  one,  and  that  many  of  them  are  quite  as  splendid 
as  the  one  I  have  described,  you  will  understand  what 
a  prodigious  expenditure  Recoleta  represents.  Mil- 
lions of  money,  much  good  taste  and  more  bad,  have 
gone  to  its  making. 

Every  kind  of  stone  seems  to  be  used:  alabaster, 
marbles,  granites,  freestone;  and  all  have  been  im- 
ported from  Europe.  Nearly  everything  of  artistic 
merit  bears  evidence  of  European  craftsmanship. 
There  is  abundance  of  beautiful  iron-work  and  bronze 
plaques,  medallions,  statues.  The  debased  modern 
Italian  work  is  very  noticeable.  Almost  every  atro- 
city is  of  Italian  origin.  But  there  are  several  mauso- 
leums of  black  granite,  in  the  style  of  Germany's  art 
nouveau,  which  show  how  beautifully  that  may  be 
treated.  They  are  so  individual  and  yet  so  restrained 
and  dignified  that  the  good  taste  of  the  owners  is  as 
evident  in  them  as  the  skill  and  genius  of  the  designers. 
Strange  to  say,  few  of  these  really  beautiful  things  bear 
the  makers'  name,  yet  every  ramshackle  erection  of 
the  jerry-builders  in  the  streets  of  Buenos  Ayres  dis- 
plays in  large  concrete  letters  the  name  of  the  proud 
architects  who  committed  it! 

Naturally,  in  Recoleta  repose  many  of  the  notable 
men  in  the  recent  history  of  Argentina.  The  great 
heroes,  such  as  Belgrano,  San  Martin,  Sarmiento,  sleep 
elsewhere  in  lonely  state;  but  here  are  many  presidents, 
generals,  statesmen,  mingled  with  the  rabble  of  the 
merely  rich.  There  is  also  a  quadrangle  stuffed  with 
hundreds  of  coffins  let  into  niches  in  the  walls,  tier 
above  tier,  up  to  some  thirty  feet  in  height,  but  that 
is  mossy  and  neglected,  as  it  recalls  the  old  days  be- 


120  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

fore  the  coming  of  the  "boom";  yet  it  is  there  that 
the  real  "  forefathers  of  the  city  sleep  " ;  there  you 
will  find  the  true  blue  Argentine  who  in  life  to-day  is 
rara  avis. 

One  could  write  a  whole  chapter  on  Recoleta,  while 
its  history  and  the  stories  of  its  tombs  are  worthy  of 
a  book.  But  our  purpose  is  a  paseo,  and  enough  has 
been  said,  perhaps,  to  indicate  that  in  its  narrow  and 
crowded  lanes  of  mausoleums  a  paseo  no  less  interest- 
ing, but  very  different  in  kind,  from  that  of  Palermo, 
may  be  made.  Unlike  the  theme  of  the  popular  song, 
however,  it  is  not  "  all  right  in  the  summer  time." 
What  one  misses  most  is  "  the  storied  urn."  The 
"  animated  bust  "  there  is  and  to  spare ;  but  the  tombs 
are  lacking  in  interesting  inscriptions.  Usually, 
Propiedad  de  la  familia  Fulano  de  Tal  is  all  that  gives 
the  wanderer  a  clue  to  the  identity  of  the  peaceful 
dwellers  in  these  marble  halls.  The  graveyard  poet 
is  unhonoured  in  Recoleta.  One  feature  I  had  almost 
forgotten,  and  it  is  very  much  in  tune  with  modern 
Buenos  Ayres.  Several  magnificent  tombs  were  un- 
occupied and  bore  tickets  announcing  that  they  were  for 
sale.  They  had  been  erected  by  enterprising  specula- 
tors. Thus  the  Argentine  who  has  suddenly  become 
wealthy  by  selling  his  "  camp,"  bought  a  fine  mansion 
in  Buenos  Ayres,  and  joined  the  Jockey  Club,  may 
acquire  a  ready-made  mausoleum  for  his  "  family." 
Ah,  the  magic  peso ! 

Chacarita,  a  long  way  westward  from  Recoleta,  is 
the  great  general  place  of  burial.  It  is  many  times 
larger  than  Recoleta  and  more  varied  in  its  memorials, 
though  it  also  contains  great  avenues  of  handsome 


MORE  "PASEOS"  IN  BUENOS  AYRES       121 

mausoleums.  A  portion  of  Chacarita  is  dedicated  to 
the  British  and  Americans,  and  here  one  encounters 
the  names  of  many  of  one's  fellow-countrymen  who 
have  helped  to  build  up  the  amazing  prosperity  of  the 
Argentine  and  eventually  laid  their  bones  in  its  friendly 
soil.  One  grave,  most  likely  to  be  passed  unnoticed, 
bears  a  simple  stone  which  records  that  he  who  sleeps 
beneath  was  the  last  lineal  descendant  of  the  Earls  of 
Douglas.  It's  a  far  cry  from  the  historic  haunts  of 
the  Black  Douglas  to  Chacarita,  but  so  runs  the  world 
away. 

Still  farther  westward,  yet  within  the  boundaries  of 
this  wide-spreading  city,  is  the  Parque  del  Oeste,  which 
covers  even  more  ground  than  the  Parque  3  de  Febrero 
at  Palermo.  We  never  met  any  Gringos  who  were  in 
the  habit  of  taking  a  paseo  there;  while  in  the  pretty 
little  park  in  the  Boca,  to  which  we  occasionally  wan- 
dered, my  wife  and  I,  we  never  saw  anybody  above  the 
loafer  class  enjoying  its  leafy  shade.  In  fact,  this 
applies  to  all  the  parks  of  Buenos  Ayres,  if  we  except 
Palermo  and  the  Botanical  Gardens  —  they  are  the 
haunts  of  undesirables,  and  while  they  certainly  beau- 
tify the  city  and  look  extremely  well  as  green  spots  on 
the  coloured  plans,  they  might  not  exist  so  far  as  the 
decent  population  is  concerned. 

On  a  very  tiny  scale  the  picturesque  Plaza  Consti- 
tucion  reminds  one  of  the  debaters'  ground  at  Hyde 
Park,  for  here  come  the  socialist  orators  to  harangue 
little  groups  of  artisans  and  labourers,  and  here  the 
tireless  warriors  of  the  Ejercito  de  Salvacion  raise  the 
banner  of  "  Blood  and  Fire  "  and  wage  an  unequal 
battle  against  the  forces  of  Unbelief,  Idolatry  and  In- 


122  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

difference.  To  encounter  these  uniformed  enthusiasts 
in  the  remotest  corners  of  earth  wrings  even  from  the 
antipathetic  a  tribute  of  admiration  for  the  genius  of 
him  who  founded  the  strange  movement  and  gave  his 
life  to  a  great  idea.  I  am  not  sure  but  that  the  Salva- 
tion Army  discharges  a  more  urgent  and  useful  social 
service  in  cities  like  Buenos  Ayres  and  Montevideo 
than  it  does  in  the  land  of  its  birth.  But  it  may  be 
that  the  wanderer  is  apt  to  admire  abroad  qualities 
which  at  home  would  leave  him  cold. 

In  the  Plaza  Constitucion  there  is  an  elaborate  arti- 
ficial hill,  with  the  artificial  ruins  of  a  castle !  As  the 
whole  erection  is  now  girt  about  with  barbed  wire,  I 
suspect  its  constructors  builded  better  than  they  knew 
and,  in  attempting  to  imitate  ruins,  succeeded  so  well 
that  u  the  ruins  "  speedily  became  "  dangerous. "  But 
the  pathos  of  the  sight  will  not  escape  the  reflective  eye. 

Of  the  Paseo  de  Julio  I  have  already  written.  It  is 
a  great  blot  on  the  municipality  that  this  most  beau- 
tifully laid-out  promenade,  with  all  its  pleasant  green- 
ery, its  banks  of  flowers,  its  very  remarkable  marble 
fountain  of  the  seductive  mermaids,  should  be  a  haunt 
of  the  vilest  classes  of  the  community.  Yet  it  was  here, 
I  confess,  that  when  I  went  a-wandering  alone  I  most 
often  strayed,  and  an  elderly  gentleman  who  lived  at 
our  hotel  told  me  that  it  used  to  be  his  practice  of  an 
evening  to  smoke  his  after-dinner  cigar  in  a  stroll  along 
the  Paseo  de  Julio,  until  he  was  warned  that  some  night 
perhaps  he  would  be  added  to  the  long  list  of  victims 
who  had  there  received  a  knife  in  their  vitals  and  been 
robbed  while  they  breathed  their  last.  The  shops  along 
the  Paseo  certainly  contain  enough  daggers  to  kill  off 


MORE  "  PASEOS  "  IN  BUENOS  AYRES       123 

the  whole  community  in  a  comparatively  short  time, 
if  used  with  system.  There  were  several  cases  of 
murder  in  the  Paseo  during  my  stay,  a  man  being  done 
to  death,  in  one  instance,  for  the  equivalent  of  nine 
shillings. 

As  I  have  already  hinted  pretty  broadly,  if  there  is 
but  little  that  the  visitor  can  find  to  interest  him  in  the 
way  of  paseos  within  the  wide  boundaries  of  the  city, 
there  is  even  less  beyond.  When  we  have  enumerated 
the  Tigre,  Hurlingham,  San  Isidro  and  San  Andres,  the 
list  of  pleasure  resorts  in  the  near  neighbourhood  is 
exhausted,  and  I  have  deliberately  made  the  best  of  it 
by  including  San  Isidro,  which  is  merely  a  residential 
suburb  prettily  set  on  rising  ground.  I  tramped  all 
round  San  Isidro  one  lovely  autumn  day,  hunting  for 
a  new  golf  course,  which  I  found  to  be  so  new  that 
the  greens  had  not  yet  been  laid.  At  that  time  the 
place,  pretty  as  it  was,  could  not  be  said  to  hold  the 
slightest  interest  for  the  visitor.  Its  church  is  pleas- 
antly situated  on  the  high  ground  of  the  barranca,  an 
elevated  ridge  which  denotes  the  former  river  course. 
There  is  a  dainty  public  garden  trending  downward 
from  the  church  to  the  railway  level,  and  one  has  a 
spacious  view  of  the  country,  now  bosky  and  broken 
towards  the  River  Tigre.  The  President  of  the  Re- 
public had  a  house  at  San  Isidro  and  there  were  some 
very  charming  villas  to  be  noted.  But  it  could 
scarcely  be  considered  a  "  show  place  " —  there  are 
many  New  York  suburbs  far  more  beautiful  —  though 
the  patriotic  Buenos  Ayrian  would  probably  complain 
if  I  failed  to  include  San  Isidro  among  the  charms  of 
the  country-side  between  the  city  and  the  Tigre. 


124  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

At  San  Andres  there  is  a  fine  golf-course,  with  a 
Scots  professional,  and  indeed  a  fine  flavour  of  Scots 
even  to  the  name,  which  is  the  Spanish  for  Scotland's 
patron  saint.  There  is  naught  else  at  San  Andres,  save 
the  usual  vast  acreage  of  flat  uninteresting  earth. 
Hurlingham  is  more  varied  in  its  interests  and  more 
picturesque.  These  resorts  are  almost  exclusively 
British,  with  a  very  light  sprinkling  of  Americans,  who 
are  usually  classed  as  ingleses  by  the  natives.  I  have 
sunny  —  and  also  showery  —  recollections  of  both. 

Remains  the  Tigre.  And  when  all  is  said,  the  Tigre 
is  the  one  playground  of  the  Buenos-Ayrians,  after 
Palermo.  Of  it  I  have  many  mingled  memories. 
Some  eighteen  or  twenty  miles  to  the  northwest  of  the 
city  the  River  Tigre  joins  its  turbid  waters  with  the 
tawny  flood  of  the  River  Plate.  Near  the  junction, 
the  Tigre  is  itself  a  river  of  considerable  volume  and  it 
is  broken  up  by  numerous  small  islands,  which,  thanks 
to  the  frequent  flooding  in  the  rainy  seasons,  are  ren- 
dered extremely  fertile,  as  the  river  deposits  coatings 
of  rich  soil  upon  them.  It  is  the  delta  of  the  Nile  on  a 
miniature  scale.  Thus  it  is  that  these  islands  in  com- 
mon with  the  banks  of  the  river  for  many  miles  are  al- 
ways clothed  with  verdure  and  all  sorts  of  fruit  trees 
flourish  abundantly.  The  natural  growth  is  low  and 
bushy;  the  few  clumps  of  taller  trees  have  all  been 
planted.  But  here  at  last  we  have  something  ap- 
proaching "  scenery."  Picturesque  "  back-waters  "  al- 
lure the  oarsmen  in  all  directions.  There  is  no  sensa- 
tional beauty  —  not  a  vestige  of  anything  unusual. 
Still  the  Tigre  does  offer  to  the  hungry  eye  of  the  dis- 
illusioned wanderer  some  natural  interest. 


2  2 

£  o 
o 

X  g 

J  H 

0  O 


0  3 


a    P< 
G    o 


MORE  "PASEOS"  IN  BUENOS  AYRES       125 

But  let  me  tell  you  of  the  town  that  has  sprung  up 
here,  before  we  go  a-boating  on  the  river.  The  rail- 
way approach  to  it  is  as  unlike  a  pleasure  resort  as 
Newark,  N.  J.,  is  unlike  the  Champs  Elysees.  In  the 
town  itself  the  streets  are  still  to  be  made,  and  after  a 
day  or  two  of  rain  horses  have  to  haul  you  through 
mud  which  reaches  up  to  their  knees,  so  that  it  is  an 
agony  to  ride  in  a  coach,  as  the  animals  can  only  be 
made  to  perform  their  terrible  task  by  the  most  brutal 
thrashing.  Once  only  did  I  consent  to  endure  the  ex- 
perience of  seeing  two  poor  creatures  flogged  unmerci- 
fully to  transport  us  a  distance  of  about  half  a  mile 
across  the  wooden  bridge  and  through  the  monstrous 
mire  to  the  Tigre  Boat  Club  on  the  other  side  of  the 
river. 

Along  the  river  banks  there  is  foot-room  enough, 
recalling  the  curate's  egg,  in  being  good  in  parts.  On 
the  left  bank  there  are  the  beginnings  of  what  some 
day  may  be  very  pretty  riverside  gardens,  but  the  road- 
way for  vehicles  is  merely  mother  earth  in  her  chang- 
ing varieties  of  mud  and  dust.  After  rain  it  is  impas- 
sable for  motor  cars  and  in  dry  weather  it  is  covered 
with  train-loads  of  dust.  In  its  former  state  I  have 
seen  a  large  motor  car  imbedded  up  to  the  level  of  the 
chassis  and  two  other  cars  on  drier  ground,  with  ropes 
attached,  utterly  powerless  to  move  it  one  foot,  and  I 
have  seen  it  when  the  passage  of  an  automobile  meant 
"  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  "  which  the  Buenos  Ayres 
Israelites  —  whose  name  is  legion  —  might  have  de- 
scried in  the  wilderness  of  the  city!  Most  of  the  quin- 
tals or  country  residences  are  situated  on  the  left  bank, 
in  streets  that  run  at  right  angles  to  the  river,  and  many 


ia6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  these  country  chalets  are  very  charming,  both  in 
architecture  and  rustic  surroundings,  but  assuredly  an 
aeroplane  would  be  the  most  practical  way  of  reaching 
them  after  a  shower.  I  noticed  a  childish  affection  for 
plaster  effigies  of  dogs  and  other  animals  in  the  gar- 
dens, one  quinta  achieving  the  limit  of  bad  taste  with 
a  perfect  stucco  menagerie  dotted  about  the  garden. 
There  were  dogs,  cats,  geese,  foxes,  storks,  hens,  and 
many  other  "  strange  wild  fowl,"  to  say  nothing  of  the 
little  gnomes,  so  popular  as  garden  ornaments  in  Swit- 
zerland. A  more  ludicrous  exhibition  could  not  be  im- 
agined. The  houses  are  built  of  many  different  mate- 
rials, but  stucco  prevails,  and  they  are  painted  in  all  the 
colours  of  the  spectroscope,  some  of  them  rivalling  the 
garish  exterior  effects  of  Italian  ice  cream  saloons;  but 
others,  not  a  few,  charming  in  every  detail. 

The  river  banks  are  occupied  chiefly  by  numerous 
boat  clubs,  some  of  which  possess  very  fine  buildings, 
with  every  kind  of  modern  luxury.  All  the  nations  of 
Europe  seem  to  be  represented  in  this  way  and  so  far 
as  I  could  gather  the  Germans  vie  with  the  British  in 
their  devotion  to  the  river  sport,  though  the  native  Ar- 
gentines can  pull  an  oar  with  the  best  of  them  and  have 
several  handsome  club  houses.  There  is  a  large  and 
well-appointed  hotel  and  a  magnificent  home  for  the 
Tigre  Club  was  nearing  completion  before  I  left 
Buenos  Ayres.  This  is  the  fashionable  resort  of  the 
smart  set,  who  are  infinitely  more  interested  in  the 
roulette  table  and  baccarat  than  in  anything  so  whole- 
some as  the  manly  sport  which  the  other  and  less  gor- 
geous club-houses  represent.  They  motor  down  the 
sixteen  miles  from  Buenos  Ayres  on  Sunday  afternoon, 


MORE  "  PASEOS  "  IN  BUENOS  AYRES       127 

after  the  races  at  Palermo  are  over;  get  inside  the  Ti- 
gre  Club  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  so  away  from  the 
mosquitoes;  spend  the  evening  in  "play";  stay  the 
night  and  so  to  Buenos  Ayres  in  the  morning. 

But  the  scene  along  the  river  on  a  Sunday  afternoon 
is  bright  with  life.  Crews  practising  in  outriggers, 
lonely  canoeists,  loaded  boats  of  trippers  beating  the 
water  with  ill-timed  blades,  motor-launches  scurrying 
along  well-laden  with  passengers  and  delightfully  ob- 
livious of  the  "  rules  of  the  road,"  the  gilded  youth 
showing  the  pace  of  his  new  motor-boat  and  translat- 
ing his  Florida  swagger  into  terms  of  the  river.  An 
animated  and  pleasing  scene. 

There  are  leafy  shades  on  many  of  the  islands  where 
teas  may  be  served  or  where  you  may  picnic  if  you  be 
so  minded,  just  as  at  home.  To  one  of  these  we  went 
occasionally  on  our  boating  excursions.  It  is  a  little 
island  orchard.  The  catering  is  excellent  and  among 
the  spring-blossoms, — "  under  boughs  of  breathing 
May  "  used  to  ring  strange  in  the  memory  when  one 
knew  it  was  October,  though  the  conditions  were  May 
—  it  was  pleasant  to  sip  the  fragrant  herb,  which  in  the 
Argentine  they  can  brew  as  well  as  in  England  and  bet- 
ter than  I  found  elsewhere  in  South  America.  This 
particular  island  is  the  property  of  a  certain  lady  who 
in  the  wicked  past  was  a  dancer  at  the  Casino,  when 
that  was  probably  the  most  notorious  entertainment  in, 
any  civilised  city  ("  according  to  information  re- 
ceived ")  but  who  is  now  a  douce  and  not  unattractive 
widow  "  with  a  past,"  and  with  a  present  which  in- 
cludes good  teas  and  a  hearty  welcome.  Everything  is 
so  lacking  in  historic  interest  out  in  the  Argentine  that 


ia8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

I  found  myself  not  a  little  piqued  by  the  story  of  the  ex- 
bailarina  and  her  island  retreat,  to  which  she  had  with- 
drawn with  a  husband  when  her  dancing  days  were 
done,  and  the  husband  dying  soon  thereafter,  she  added 
the  tea-garden  to  her  well-stocked  orchard  and  new  in- 
terests to  her  widowhood. 

Such,  then,  is  the  Tigre,  of  which  I  had  heard  so 
much  before  I  set  sail  for  the  River  Plate.  '  There's 
such  a  charming  place  called  the  Tigre,  to  which  every- 
body goes  boating  and  picnicking,"  I  used  to  be  told. 
But  I  was  not  told  that  in  the  summer  its  mosquitoes' 
sting  was  sharper  than  serpent's  tooth,  or  that  in  the 
winter  you  had  to  wade  to  the  river  through  mire  and 
thank  the  gods  for  a  fine  dry  day  when  it  pleased  their 
extreme  sulkinesses  to  vouchsafe  so  great  a  favour. 

Still,  given  the  right  day,  the  exile  may  bless  the 
Tigre  and  may  there  dream  dreams  of  home. 


CHAPTER  X 

HOW   THE    MONEY   GOES 

BUENOS  AYRES  has  somehow  achieved  the  reputation 
of  being  "  the  most  expensive  city  in  the  world."  But 
this  is  not,  strictly,  correct;  for,  in  my  experience,  Rio 
de  Janeiro  can  give  it  some  points  and  a  beating  in  this 
respect,  and  even  its  near  neighbour,  Montevideo,  on 
the  northern  shore  of  the  River  Plate,  is,  in  a  way  pres- 
ently to  be  explained,  more  expensive.  To  the 
stranger,  however,  it  is  always  difficult  to  understand 
or  account  for  the  wide  differences  between  the  living 
expenses  in  the  principal  South  American  cities,  and 
Buenos  Ayres  and  Montevideo  offer  a  good  illustra- 
tion of  this.  In  the  former,  "  old  River  Platers  "  and 
natives  alike  will  tell  you  that  the  cost  of  living  is 
higher  in  Montevideo,  and  this  has  been  confirmed  to 
me  on  many  occasions  by  visitors  to  the  latter  city. 
But  when  living  for  some  five  months  in  Montevideo, 
and  finding  all  the  commodities  of  life  more  costly  than 
in  Buenos  Ayres,  it  seemed  odd  to  be  told  by  natives 
that  so  long  as  they  could  get  profitable  occupation  in 
the  Uruguayan  capital,  they  would  not  think  of  chang- 
ing to  the  Argentine  metropolis  where  life  was  so  much 
more  expensive. 

After  comparing  notes  with  many  acquaintances  in 
both  towns,  and  contrasting  these  with  my  own  experi- 
ences, I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  while  the  house- 
holder in  Buenos  Ayres  is  confronted  with  economic 

129 


i3o  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

conditions  which  make  for  excessively  high  cost  of  liv- 
ing, a  person  in  the  same  position  in  Montevideo  lives 
relatively  cheaper,  as  house  rents,  criminally  high  in 
Buenos  Ayres,  are  moderate  in  the  other  city,  and  do- 
mestic labour  is  somewhat  cheaper,  while  facilities  for 
securing  food  stuffs  are  greater  and  the  market  prices 
relatively  less.  But  to  the  stranger  who  does  not  take 
a  house  in  either  city,  and  prefers  the  comfortless  free- 
dom of  hotel  life,  the  conditions  are  exactly  reversed, 
so  that  Montevideo  would  appear  to  a  casual  observer 
the  more  expensive  city  in  which  to  live. 

The  main  reason  for  this  is  the  short-sighted  policy 
of  the  hotel-keepers  in  the  Uruguayan  capital,  which, 
during  the  summer  months  —  December,  January,  and 
February — is  an  increasingly  popular  place  of  resort 
for  wealthy  Argentines  and  the  no  less  wealthy  hacen- 
dados  from  the  Uruguayan  "  Camp."  The  hotels, 
then  crowded  beyond  all  possibilities  of  accommoda- 
tion,—  so  that  I  have  known  an  Argentine  Minister  of 
State  glad  to  occupy  a  bathroom,  from  which  he  noisily 
refused  to  be  ejected  in  the  morning  to  permit  of  other 
guests  turning  the  room  to  its  proper  uses  —  raise  their 
prices  to  absurd  heights,  and  when  the  season  suddenly 
collapses,  the  managers  still  endeavour  to  screw  from 
their  lingering  guests  as  near  an  approach  as  possible 
to  the  season's  prices.  Montevideo  hotels  that  three 
or  four  years  ago  were  charging  from  $3.50  to  $4.00 
per  day  (the  Uruguayan  dollar  is  worth  two  cents 
more  than  the  American)  now  demand  in  the  season 
from  seven  to  nine  dollars  for  accommodation  which 
consists  of  one  small  room,  with  full  board,  half  a  dol- 
lar extra  having  to  be  paid  for  each  bath  taken  on  the 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  131 

premises !  When  I  protested  against  this  extra  charge 
for  baths,  the  hotel-keeper  said  that  under  no  circum- 
stances was  he  prepared  to  deduct  it,  as  water  in  Mon- 
tevideo was  "  dearer  than  wine,"  because  a  maldita 
English  company  owned  the  waterworks,  and  made  the 
poor  townspeople  pay  dearly  for  the  privilege  of  keep- 
ing themselves  clean.  Under  the  circumstances,  my 
wife  and  I  were  quite  willing  to  substitute  the  cheaper 
wine  for  the  water,  but  even  this  condescension  on  our 
part  did  not  meet  with  his  approval. 

Certain  it  is  that,  although  Buenos  Ayres  cannot 
really  maintain  the  proud  claim  to  be  the  most  expensive 
city  in  the  world  —  for  I  defy  you  to  beat  the  record 
of  four  dollars  paid  by  an  acquaintance  of  mine  in  Rio 
de  Janeiro  for  one  cake  of  Pears'  soap,  a  small  packet 
of  tooth-powder,  and  four  ounces  of  tobacco,  all 
bought  in  the  same  shop !  —  it  is  in  all  conscience  one 
of  the  most  remarkably  easy  places  in  the  world  for 
getting  rid  of  money  quickly.  Mr.  Punch's  immortal 
Scotsman  who  wasn't  in  London  half  an  hour  before 
"  bang  went  saxpence  "  would  assuredly  have  had  an 
apoplectic  fit  within  a  quarter  of  an  hour  of  arriving  in 
Buenos  Ayres.  Fortunately,  the  preliminary  shocks, 
which  ought  to  be  the  severest,  are  the  least  felt,  for 
one  takes  some  little  time  to  become  familiarised  with 
the  relative  values  of  the  money,  and  not  until  one  can 
instantly  figure  the  American  or  English  values  of  the 
Argentine  notes  he  is  paying  away  does  he  quite  realise 
how  rapidly  his  hard-earned  cash  is  slipping  from  him. 

The  real  unit  of  value  in  most  transactions  is  the 
paper  peso, —  these  notes  are  usually  so  dirty  that  they 
are  in  very  truth  "  filthy  lucre  " —  and  as  the  exchange 


132  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

stands  about  11.4  to  the  English  sovereign  (the  stand- 
ard throughout  South  America),  it  will  be  seen 
that  a  peso  is  value  for  about  42  cents.  Many 
English  residents,  in  endeavouring  to  regulate  their 
expenditure,  follow  the  somewhat  simple  plan  of 
reckoning  a  peso  as  a  shilling.  This  method  certainly 
saves  worry,  though  it  is  extremely  bad  finance,  and 
worse,  when  it  is  known  that,  even  reckoned  as  a  shill- 
ing, the  peso  can  purchase  nothing  that  is  the  equivalent 
of  a  shilling's  worth  in  England.  Thus  bad  begins, 
but  worse  remains  behind,  for, —  as  we  shall  all  too 
surely  find, —  not  only  have  we  often  to  spend  three 
times,  and  sometimes  four  times  the  value  of  English 
money  to  secure  what  the  English  unit  would  have  ob- 
tained at  home,  but  the  article  so  bought  will  often 
prove  to  be  falsificado, —  a  shoddy  imitation ! 

But  what  most  strikes  the  observer  at  first  is  the 
seeming  -  negligence  with  which  the  Buenos  Ayrian 
throws  his  money  about,  and  the  brazen  audacity  of  the 
shopkeeper,  as  illustrated  by  the  price  he  places  upon 
his  wares.  The  one  is,  of  course,  a  resultant  of  the 
other,  though,  obviously,  there  must  be  other  forces  at 
work  to  inflate  prices.  Mainly,  we  have  to  bear  in 
mind  that  in  this  great  city,  perhaps  the  most  cosmo- 
politan in  the  world,  with  a  population  of  nearly  a  mil- 
lion and  a  half  gathered  from  the  ends  of  Earth,  a  mot- 
ley multitude  of  money  grubbers,  money  is  the  only 
standard  of  value.  Thus,  an  art  dealer  who  placed  a 
statue  in  his  window  and  ticketed  it  at  a  reasonable 
figure,  leaving  to  himself  a  fair  profit  after  importing 
it  at  a  fair  price,  would  not  long  continue  to  thrive  in 
Buenos  Ayres.  A  very  large  percentage  of  the  spend- 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  133 

ing  class  are  people  who  have  come  by  their  money 
easily,  and,  lacking  all  knowledge  alike  of  commercial 
values  and  intrinsic  worth,  can  judge  only  that  a  thing 
is  good  or  bad  according  as  the  seller  prices  it.  It  is 
a  happy  state  of  affairs  this,  which  cannot  last  forever, 
and  already  there  are  signs  that  the  Golden  Age  is 
passing.  In  October  of  1912,  for  instance,  I  witnessed 
a  portentous  demonstration,  in  which  a  hundred  thou- 
sand citizens  took  part,  to  petition  the  Government  and 
Municipality  for  some  immediate  legislative  action  to 
lessen  the  cruel  burden  of  the  common  people,  to  whom 
high  wages  and  brisk  trade  mean  absolutely  nothing, 
in  view  of  the  excessive  prices  for  the  merest  necessa- 
ries of  life.  To  this  I  shall  make  further  reference  in 
the  present  chapter. 

I  remember  how  impressed  I  was  in  one  of  my  ear- 
liest walks,  window  gazing  in  Calle  Florida,  by  the 
curious  care  certain  shopkeepers  had  taken  to  display 
articles  which  in  New  York  would  have  been  heaped  in 
tray-loads  and  ticketed,  "  Anything  in  this  basket  20 
cts."  In  fancy  goods  dealers',  for  example,  insignifi- 
cant little  purses  and  common  pencil-holders,  cheap 
fountain  pens  and  little  desk  calendars,  paper  knives, 
and  all  the  familiar  odds  and  ends  which  are  classed 
under  the  generic  head  of  "  fancy  goods,"  were  not 
crowded  into  the  window,  as  with  us,  suggesting  over- 
flowing richness  of  stock,  but  were  each  disposed  in 
solitary  state  at  respectful  distance  from  one  another, 
much  as  though  they  were  valuable  jewels,  and  indeed 
when  one  noted  the  prices,  they  might  have  been  pre- 
cious stones,  for  a  leather  purse  which  would  sell  in 
New  York  for  a  dollar  would  there  be  ticketed  rela- 


134  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tively  at  $3.  I  paid  exactly  $3.15  for  a  small  loose- 
leaf  pocket  book,  an  exact  copy  of  which  I  had  previ- 
ously bought  in  London  for  $1.30. 

The  chief  disparity  between  English  and  South 
American  prices  is  found  in  articles  of  clothing,  which, 
fortunately  for  most  temporary  residents,  is  a  matter 
that  does  not  greatly  trouble  them,  as  it  is  always  pos- 
sible to  take  sufficient  clothing  to  last  one  for  a  consid- 
erable period.  But  certainly  when  you  see  an  ordi- 
nary straw  hat,  that  would  sell  in  the  Strand,  London, 
for  $1.25  ticketed  somewhere  around  $4  you  are  in- 
clined to  catch  your  breath.  The  common  "  bowler," 
that  sells  in  London  at  $1.50  will  cost  you  anything 
from  four  to  five  dollars;  while  the  average  price  for 
a  suit  of  clothes  made  to  measure  in  Buenos  Ayres, 
equivalent  in  all  respects  to  a  suit  costing  twenty  dol- 
lars in  London,  is  fifty  dollars.  Consequently,  many 
Argentines  have  their  measure  taken  by  a  London 
tailor,  who,  charging  them  thirty  dollars  for  a  suit 
(thus  leaving  an  unusual  margin  of  profit  to  himself) 
enables  the  purchaser,  after  paying  $10  import  duty, 
to  wear  an  actual  London  made  suit  for  20  per  cent, 
less  than  he  can  get  one  of  inferior  quality  made  in 
Buenos  Ayres. 

To  give  anything  like  an  exhaustive  list  of  the  ex- 
cessive prices  charged  for  the  simplest  necessities  in 
the  way  of  personal  clothing  might  be  to  lay  oneself 
open  to  the  charge  of  exaggeration,  except  that,  for- 
tunately, I  have  preserved  several  newspaper  adver- 
tisements as  evidence  of  the  bona  fides  of  any  state- 
ments I  have  made,  should  these  ever  be  called  in  ques- 
tion. So  far  as  clothing  is  concerned,  I  shall  limit 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  135 

myself  to  the  further  statement  that  on  the  day  of  my 
leaving  Buenos  Ayres  for  travel  further  afield,  I  bought 
one  dozen  pairs  of  common  socks,  which  in  London  sell 
for  40  cts.  a  pair,  and  paid  for  these  exactly  forty 
pesos,  or  $1.40  per  pair.  This  was  one  of  the  few  oc- 
casions, during  my  stay  in  South  America,  when  I  found 
it  necessary  to  purchase  any  articles  of  personal  wear, 
and  afterwards  on  looking  at  the  prices  in  New  York 
and  London  stores,  I  congratulated  myself  very  heart- 
ily that  I  went  forth  to  my  adventures  in  South  Amer- 
ica well  stocked.  I  remember  an  English  traveller, 
whose  business  takes  him  to  Buenos  Ayres  for  three 
months  of  every  year,  stating  in  the  most  emphatic 
manner  that  he  would  rather  walk  down  Florida  in  his 
shirt  tail  than  commit  the  economic  crime  of  purchasing 
a  stitch  of  clothing  in  the  town, —  and  he  was  not  a 
Scotsman ! 

It  might  be  thought  that  the  Gringo  was  a  legitimate 
object  of  prey  for  the  harpy  shopkeepers  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  but  it  is  not  co.  The  present  writer,  being  not 
only  competent  to  ask  for  anything  in  the  native  lan- 
guage, but,  when  occasion  serves,  to  engage  in  heated 
and  lengthy  discussion  in  that  delightful  tongue,  never 
found  it  possible  to  secure  better  terms  than  were 
granted  to  any  Gringo  who  could  not  utter  a  sentence 
of  Spanish.  It  is  not  a  case  of  one  tariff  for  the  native 
and  another  for  the  foreigner,  as  we  find  in  Paris  and 
other  European  resorts.  The  native  pays  as  highly  — 
and,  from  long  practice,  much  more  cheerfully  —  for 
all  that  he  buys,  as  the  stranger. 

In  proof  of  this,  I  cannot  quote  a  better  example 
than  that  afforded  by  an  incident  in  which  the  silk  hat 


136  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  my  native  secretary  figured  somewhat  eminently. 
He  had  been  wearing  it  one  Sunday  at  some  special 
function  —  for  the  "  stove  pipe  "  is  throughout  Latin 
America  the  symbol  of  importance  and  of  special  oc- 
casions, as  it  used  to  be  in  England  —  and,  happening 
to  be  caught  in  a  heavy  shower,  he  required  to  send 
it  round  to  the  hatter's  for  ironing  next  morning.  His 
wife,  also  a  native,  speaking  only  Spanish,  called  in  and 
took  the  hat  back  home  (errand  boys  are  at  a 
premium).  The  charge  made  for  merely  ironing  the 
hat  was  4  pesos  ($1.68).  The  good  lady  had  no  idea 
whether  this  was  much  or  little,  but  her  husband  con- 
sidered it  a  trifle  excessive,  as  he,  having  lived  some 
little  time  in  New  York,  and  having  found  it  possible 
to  have  a  hat  ironed  there  for  10  cents  went  round 
to  the  Buenos  Ayres  hatter,  and  after  much  argument 
succeeded  in  recovering  two  pesos,  or  50  per  cent,  of 
the  charge  from  that  gentleman,  who  was  quite  in- 
different to  the  business,  and  told  him  to  keep  his  old 
hat  at  home,  as  he  had  no  wish  to  iron  anybody's 
hats! 

That  is  the  spirit  in  which  all  repairing  business  is 
done.  If  you  want  anything  repaired,  you  have  got  to 
pay  so  much  that  it  is  about  as  cheap  to  buy  a  new  ar- 
ticle. One  day  my  watch  stopped :  the  spring  was  not 
broken,  and  evidently  it  was  only  some  slight  fault,  re- 
quiring, probably,  a  speck  of  oil.  I  left  it  with  the 
watchmaker  and  asked  him  to  regulate  it.  Calling 
next  day,  the  watch  was  ready  and  going  perfectly  well, 
but  to  my  surprise  I  was  asked  to  pay  eight  pesos 
($3.35)  for  the  craftsman's  skill  and  labour  in  put- 
ting it  right. 


THE  LUXURIOUS  DOMESTIC  ARCHITECTURE  OF  BUENOS  AYRES. 

The  immense  building  seen  in  the  background  of  the  upper  illustration  is  the  home 
of  the  Paz  family  in  the  Plaza  San  Martin  ;  the  lower  view  shows  a  typical  "quinta,"  or 
country  house  of  an  Argentine  magnate  in  the  suburbs. 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  137 

"  Oh,  evidently  the  mainspring  was  broken  when  you 
charge  so  much,"  I  remarked. 

"  No,  sir,  the  mainspring  was  not  broken,"  he  re- 
plied. 

*  Then  surely  one  of  the  jewels  must  have  fallen  out, 
or  there  was  something  to  replace,  to  justify  so  heavy 
a  charge." 

"  No,  none  of  the  jewels  was  missing,  but  it  was 
quite  a  difficult  little  job,  and,  besides,  we  do  not  like 
to  repair  watches," — which  was  all  the  satisfaction  I 
was  able  to  secure  for  parting  with  eight  pesos! 

On  mentioning  my  experience  that  afternoon  to  an 
Englishman  of  longer  residence  in  the  city,  he  re- 
marked that  these  were  the  sort  of  things  that  never 
could  happen  to  one  after  two  or  three  years,  because 
one  soon  discovered  it  was  cheaper  to  buy,  as  you  can, 
a  good  useful  5  peso  American  watch,  and  whenever 
it  goes  out  of  order,  throw  it  away  and  buy  another. 

There  is  a  perfectly  reasonable  explanation  of  this. 
Workmanship,  artisan  skill,  labour  of  all  sorts,  are 
the  commodities  at  highest  premiums  in  Buenos  Ayres. 
People  are  making  their  money,  reaping  fortunes,  not 
from  honest,  productive  workmanship  and  exercise  of 
creative  skill,  as  in  North  American  and  in  other  set- 
tled industrial  countries,  but  merely  from  sale  and  ex- 
change. The  men  who  grow  rich  are  the  agents,  the 
middle-men,  and  it  is  the  middle-men  who  are  taking 
back  as  quickly  as  they  can  from  the  wage-earners  the 
high  salaries  which  the  latter  can  easily  obtain  but  not 
so  easily  retain.  The  stationer,  for  instance,  who  sold 
me  for  ten  pesos  a  mechanical  pencil  sharpener,  which 
my  office  boy  immediately  broke  by  carelessly  inserting 


138  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  point  of  the  pencil,  charged  five  pesos  to  repair 
the  little  machine.  His  business  was  to  sell  at  a  profit 
what  he  had  imported  from  Europe,  but  not  to  supply 
skill  and  labour  to  put  anything  right. 

As  rather  an  inveterate  smoker,  and  one  with  a 
preference  for  cigars,  I  recall  how  disappointed  I  was 
to  be  told  by  the  captain  of  the  ship  on  which  I  sailed 
to  the  River  Plate,  that  there  was  probably  no  place 
in  the  world  where  cigars  were  so  bad  or  so  expensive 
as  in  Buenos  Ayres.  I  cherished  for  a  time  some  faint 
hope  that  this  was  perhaps  a  sweeping  generalisation 
founded  on  unfortunate  experience,  but  I  must  bear 
witness  to  its  general  accuracy.  The  cigar  shops  are 
many  of  them  most  beautifully  appointed,  fitted  up 
with  a  luxury  rare  even  in  London  or  New  York.  In 
not  one  of  them  is  there  a  smokable  cigar  to  be  had  at 
less  than  60  centavos  (roughly  25  cts.)  and  in  order 
to  enjoy  something  approximating  to  the  pleasure  of 
a  fine  Cuban  cigar,  which  would  sell  in  New  York  for 
40  cts.,  you  will  have  to  disburse  at  least  3  pesos,  or 
$1.25.  It  is  a  custom  among  the  Argentines,  who  are 
notably  abstemious,  to  invite  a  friend  to  smoke  a  cigar, 
under  circumstances  where  an  American  or  English- 
man would  ask  him  to  "  have  a  drink."  Often  I  have 
noticed  at  the  tobacconist's  a  gentleman  taking  in  a 
friend  to  "  stand  "  him  a  cigar,  and  seldom,  if  he  is  a 
gentleman  who  values  his  self-respect  and  reputation 
in  the  community,  will  he  offer  a  friend  anything  less 
than  a  cigar  that  cost  three  pesos.  It  is  naturally  a 
biggish  cigar,  and  it  will  certainly  have  a  very  wide 
band,  with  a  good  splash  of  gilt  on  it,  and  it  will  prob- 
ably smoke  not  quite  so  well  as  a  2$-ct.  cigar  sold  in 


• 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  139 

Broadway.  So  far  as  I  could  discover,  the  moist  at- 
mosphere deteriorates  the  imported  Havannas. 
Locally  made  imitations  are  concocted  from  Brazilian 
tobacco,  packed  up  in  disused  Havanna  boxes  and 
hawked  among  the  offices  by  men  who  pretend  to  have 
smuggled  them  into  the  country  without  paying  duty. 
Admirably  "  faked  "  as  to  outward  appearance  —  for 
the  art  of  falsification  is  one  of  the  few  local  industries 
that  flourish  in  Buenos  Ayres  —  these  cigars  can  de- 
ceive no  one  after  the  first  puff,  but  thousands  of  boxes 
are  annually  sold  to  ready  buyers,  who,  unable  to 
afford  the  shop  prices,  at  least  make  a  pretence  of 
smoking  Havannas,  though  they  know  quite  well  they 
are  being  fobbed  off  with  cheap  Brazilian  tobacco. 
Cigars  are  sold  at  all  sorts  of  prices,  from  20  centavos 
upwards,  and  occasionally  it  is  possible  to  smoke  one 
sold  at  50  centavos,  as  I  had  frequently  to  do  at  my 
hotel,  where  I  was  charged  one  peso  for  a  cigar,  on 
the  band  of  which  50  centavos  was  printed.  Repre- 
senting to  the  manager  that  42  cents  seemed  a  good 
deal  to  pay  for  a  2i-cent  cigar,  the  value  of  which  in 
New  York  would  not  have  exceeded  ten  cents,  he 
blandly  assured  me  that  they  always  charged  a  peso  for 
a  50  centavo  cigar  in  the  hotel! 

Hotel  prices  are  naturally  in  excess  of  all  shop  prices 
in  Buenos  Ayres,  as  elsewhere,  and  of  course  there  are 
degrees  even  among  the  hotels.  At  one  hotel  where 
some  of  the  modern  comforts  common  to  the  better 
class  of  hotels  in  London  or  New  York  may  be  ob- 
tained, the  tariff  is  so  formidable  that  even  an  Argen- 
tine millionaire  whose  acquaintance  I  made,  and  who 
had  been  making  the  hotel  his  headquarters  for  -a  year 


140  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

or  two  instead  of  living  in  a  town  house,  told  me  that 
he. would  have  to  quit,  as  he  felt  it  was  little  short  of 
sinful  to  pay  the  weekly  bill  with  which  he  was  pre- 
sented. Another  gentleman,  the  manager  of  a  very 
large  industrial  concern  in  England,  whose  market  is 
mainly  in  the  Argentine,  was  spending  several  months 
in  Buenos  Ayres  during  my  stay,  and  left  the  palatial 
hotel  in  question  to  come  to  the  more  modest  estab- 
lishment where  we  two  Gringos  put  up.  In  talking 
over  the  relative  charges  with  me,  he  said  that  while 
we  had  to  pay  enough  in  all  conscience  for  what  we 
received  (and  for  which  no  praying  could  have  made 
us  "truly  thankful"!),  there  was  at  least  the  differ- 
ence between  paying  excessively  for  very  common  fare 
and  having  your  money  literally  "  taken  away  from 
you."  Yet  the  hotel  in  question,  thanks  to  the  extraor- 
dinary difficulty  of  obtaining  competent  assistants  at 
reasonable  wages,  and  to  the  famine  prices  which  must 
be  paid  for  every  domestic  commodity,  as  well  as  the 
immense  capital  that  has  to  be  invested  in  steel  frames, 
reinforced  concrete,  and  furnishings,  is  no  very  profit- 
able business  for  those  who  conduct  it.  I  doubt  if 
they  could  charge  less  than  they  do !  This  was  often 
my  experience  when  I  came  to  inquire  into  what 
seemed  altogether  unreasonable  prices:  to  find  that 
those  who  seemed  to  be  imposing  on  one  were  really 
asking  no  more  than  the  circumstances  warranted. 

All  the  same,  a  knowledge  of  the  economic  condi- 
tions does  not  greatly  help  you  to  look  with  approval 
upon  a  charge  of  $2.35  for  placing  a  bunch  of  about 
six  roses  and  half-a-dozen  other  flowers  in  a  bowl  on 
your  table  at  dinner  when  you  are  entertaining  a  couple 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  141 

of  guests,  especially  if,  as  you  happen  to  know  for 
certain,  the  said  flowers  have  been  left  over  from  a 
wedding  celebration  in  the  hotel  the  evening  before. 
On  several  occasions  this  was  the  charge  which  ap- 
peared on  our  weekly  bill  for  decorating  our  little 
table  in  the  gorgeous  manner  described.  Myself,  hav- 
ing scant  use  for  alcoholic  beverages,  my  main  ex- 
penses on  liquids  touched  "  soft  drinks."  Certainly 
the  prices  were  hard  enough.  I  have  retained  some 
of  our  hotel  bills  as  reminders.  From  these  I  extract 
the  following  interesting  items:  One  bottle  of  San 
Pellegrino  Water,  55  cts. ;  Salus  Water,  70  cts. ;  Small 
Apollinaris,  35  cts.;  Schweppe's  Soda,  58  cts.;  Vichy, 
55  cts.;  Small  Perrier,  35  cts.  As  most  visitors  make 
it  a  point  never  to  drink  the  water  of  the  town,  and 
can  easily  dispose  of  several  bottles  of  Perrier  or 
Schweppe's  Soda  per  day  during  the  hot  weather,  the 
reader  can  figure  what  proportions  the  weekly  bill  for 
mineral  waters  will  reach,  and  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  the  figures  given  are  those  charged  at  a  hotel  of 
an  extremely  modest  character.  Nor  would  these 
prices  appear  so  excessive  if  each  bottle  contained  what 
was  indicated  on  the  label.  There  is  no  security  that 
such  is  the  case,  and  I  know  that  many  a  time  have  I 
had  to  accept  some  local  concoction  put  forth  in  the 
guise  of  an  imported  European  mineral  water. 

I  also  find  some  notes  as  to  alcoholic  drinks  in  our 
hotel  bills,  which  will  give  some  notion  of  the  casual 
expenses  of  entertaining  friends.  For  a  bottle  of 
Guineas'  Stout,  45  cts. ;  for  a  glass  of  Tonic  Water  and 
Gin,  50  cts.;  for  a  bottle  of  Chandon,  $5.30;  the  same 
for  a  bottle  of  Veuve  Clicquot;  Chateau  Lafitte,  $3  ;  and 


142  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

so  on.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  disparity  between 
American  and  Argentine  prices  in  the  matter  of  alco- 
holic drinks  is  less  glaring  than  in  the  case  of  mineral 
waters.  But  I  find  an  occasional  item  in  these  weekly 
bills  which  probably  touches  the  high  water  mark  of 
imposition.  Under  the  heading  of  "  Alcohol,"  we 
were  charged  from  time  to  time  75  cts.  for  a  pint  bottle 
of  methylated  spirits  for  use  in  a  small  spirit  lamp  1 

Apart  altogether  from  the  normal  excessive  chargers 
in  the  ordinary  hotels,  which  one  comes  to  accept  with- 
out demur  simply  because  they  are  universal,  a  further 
stage  of  imposition  is  to  be  noted  in  the  swindling  pro- 
pensities of  restaurant  employees.  Thus,  I  have  a  note 
that  I  was  once  made  to  pay  $1.05  for  one  glass  of 
tonic  water  and  gin  which  I  "  stood  "  a  friend,  and 
on  various  occasions  I  was  charged  63  cts.  for  a  glass 
of  whisky  and  soda,  while  I  had  myself  consumed  fre- 
quent glasses  of  hot  water  with  half-a-lemon  squeezed 
therein*  and  a  spoonful  of  sugar  added,  at  a  charge  of 
27  cts.,  before  I  realised  that  a  portion  of  these  casual 
expenses  was  finding  its  way  into  the  pocket  of  the 
gentleman  with  the  shifty  eyes  who  presided  over  a 
certain  "  bar  "  where  the  drinks  were  obtained.  But 
the  hotel  charge  of  62  cts.  for  half  an  hour's  game  of 
billiards,  which  conformed  in  every  particular  to  that 
imagined  by  W.  S.  Gilbert  as  the  punishment  of  the 
billiard  sharper, — 

"  On  a  cloth  untrue,  with  a  twisted  cue, 
And  elliptical  billiard  balls,"— 

seemed  to  me  at  once  an  insult  and  an  injury. 

Mentioning  petty  swindling  on  the  part  of  employees 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  143 

reminds  me  that  the  favourite  dodge  is  to  return  the 
change  of  a  five  peso  bill  when  a  ten  peso  bill  has  been 
presented.  My  patience,  though  seared  by  many  tiny 
swindles  mutely  borne,  was  never  equal  to  taking  the 
five:pesos-for-ten  trick  "  lying  down."  I  first  became 
acquainted  with  it,  soon  after  my  arrival,  at  Retiro 
station,  when  taking  out  a  ticket  for  Hurlingham,  the 
British  surburban  resort.  Presenting  a  ten  peso  bill 
at  the  booking  office,  the  clerk  hastily  handed  me  my 
ticket  and  the  change  of  a  five  peso  bill,  which  fact  I 
discovered  only  on  examining  my  change  after  leav- 
ing the  window.  But  even  at  that  early  period  of  my 
stay,  my  command  of  the  language  was  good  enough 
to  enable  me  to  return  to  the  window  and  hold  up  the 
entire  crowd  of  would-be  ticket-buyers,  by  informing 
the  clerk  that  I  intended  to  stay  there  until  he  handed 
me  another  five  pesos.  He  brazenly  denied  that  I  had 
presented  a  ten  peso  bill,  but  on  my  stoutly  asserting 
that  I  intended  remaining  in  front  of  his  window  till 
I  received  another  five  pesos,  he  forthwith  met  my  de* 
mand,  and  thereby  advertised  himself  to  the  entire 
company  the  thief  he  undoubtedly  was.  I  do  not  ex- 
aggerate when  I  state  that  on  dozens  of  occasions  I 
had  to  draw  the  attention  of  shop  assistants  and  waiters 
(especially  on  dining  cars)  to  the  fact  that  they  had 
made  this  slight  error  in  my  change.  When  it  is  re- 
membered that  five  pesos  is  no  less  a  sum  than  $2.10, 
it  will  be  understood  that  some  slight  knowledge  of 
the  language  is  desirable  when  one  goes  a-shopping 
among  the  petty  swindlers  of  Buenos  Ayres. 

Perhaps  the  very  apex  of  audacity  in  the  matter  of 
excessive  prices  is  reached  by  the  chemists,  who  ought 


144  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

surely  to  be  the  richest  trades  people  in  all  South 
America.  It  was  our  unfortunate  experience,  as  in- 
deed it  is  the  experience  of  most  Northerners  who  have 
to  live  for  any  length  of  time  in  these  parts,  to  be 
fairly  frequent  patrons  of  the  drug  shop.  But  no 
amount  of  experience  reconciled  us  to  the  prices  that 
were  exacted.  Nor  do  I  think  the  natives  ever  pur- 
chased anything  without  an  inward  or  outward  protest, 
as  I  was  frequently  present  at  disputes  between  cus- 
tomer and  chemist.  I  recall  particularly  a  youth  who 
had  been  sent  by  his  employer  to  fetch  some  medicine 
that  had  been  dispensed  for  him,  and  on  offering  all 
the  money  his  employer  had  given  him  to  pay  for  the 
medicine,  he  was  found  to  have  brought  less  than  half 
the  price  demanded  by  the  chemist. 

It  was  my  wife's  unfortunate  fate  to  have  to  con- 
sume a  large  number  of  cachets,  prescribed  by  a 
Porteno  doctor,  and  these  I  had  to  purchase  weekly  at 
a  well-known  drug  store,  paying  $2.10  for  thirty,  the 
price  of  which  in  London  would  have  been  60  cents. 
Out  of  curiosity,  after  two  or  three  weeks,  I  took  the 
prescription  to  another  chemist  —  as  there  is  one  at 
every  other  street  corner,  the  choice  is  ample  —  and 
was  supplied  with  precisely  the  same  articles  at  $1.05. 
But  the  following  week,  when  I  returned  for  a  new 
supply,  I  was  charged  $2.10,  as  at  the  other  chemist's! 
On  my  protesting  that  I  had  only  paid  half  that  price 
the  previous  week,  I  was  informed  that  as  they  had 
a  somewhat  limited  supply  of  a  certain  drug  used  in 
the  prescription,  they  were  forced  to  charge  an  in- 
creased price,  and  had  therefore  added  100  per  cent. 
to  the  first  charge !  These  prices  are  typical  of  every- 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  145 

thing  sold  in  the  chemists1  shops;  from  soap  to  chest 
protectors,  there  is  not  a  single  item  that  will  not  cost 
the  purchaser  from  three  to  five  times  the  price  at 
which  it  may  be  bought  in  the  stores  of  New  York  or 
London. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  it  is  a  somewhat  expensive 
business  to  be  ill  in  South  America,  and  as  most  peo- 
ple, natives  included,  seem  to  be  in  a  continual  state  of 
recovering  from  illness  (so  much  so  that  a  familiar 
greeting  among  the  natives  is  Buenas  dtas,  y  como  le 
pasa  su  estomago?" — "Good  morning,  and  how's 
your  stomach?  "),  the  harvest  of  the  chemist  fails  less 
frequently  than  that  of  the  agriculturist.  Tfee  com- 
monest class  of  doctor  charges  a  fee  of  $4.15  if  you 
call  upon  him  for  a  few  minutes'  consultation  and  are 
fortunate  enough  to  be  admitted  before  his  two  hours 
of  work  are  over,  as  you  will  usually  find  a  roomful 
of  patients  awaiting  his  attention.  If  vyou  indulge  in 
the  luxury  of  inviting  a  visit  from  him  at  your  house, 
his  charge  will  be  $§.30,  which  must  be  paid  on  the  nail, 
while  payment  for  a  consultation  at  his  rooms  is  either 
made  to  an  attendant  before  entering,  or  to  the  doctor 
himself  on  leaving.  A  simple  operation,  such  as  that 
for  appendicitis,  will  cost  you  anything  from  $250  to 
$1000. 

Returning  again  to  the  smaller  items  of  daily  ex- 
pense which  help  to  drain  your  earnings  away  from 
you  as  quickly  almost  as  you  receive  them,  I  find  I  have 
a  few  further  notes  worthy  of  record.  At  the  hotel 
where  we  lived,  two  English  servants  suddenly  ap- 
peared. They  had  been  attracted  to  Buenos  Ayres  as 
the  new  Eldorado,  and  wages  of  forty  pesos  a  month 


146  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

had  seemed  to  them  the  beginning  of  fortune,  espe- 
cially when  they  estimated  the  possibilities  of  "  tips." 
But  one  of  them,  requiring  to  buy  a  new  hat  after  her 
first  fortnight  in  the  city,  and  being  charged  twenty- 
three  pesos  for  the  same  (about  $10),  which  in  Lon- 
don she  would  have  considered  fairly  expensive  at 
$1.70,  she  and  her  companion  very  speedily  made  up 
their  minds  to  return  home,  prepared  to  be  a  little  more 
contented  with  the  conditions  they  had  so  lately 
despised.  A  peso  and  a  half  (63  cts.)  was  a  common 
charge  for  hair-cutting  —  a  simple  hair-cut,  no 
shampoo  or  singeing  included,  mark  you. 

As  for  theatre  charges,  the  opera  save  in  the 
gallery  —  where  anybody  who  has  any  reputation  to 
maintain  in  the  town  can  not  afford  to  be  seen  —  is 
possible  only  to  the  wealthy,  and  consequently  it  is 
seldom  visited  by  English  residents,  except  when 
honoured  by  an  invitation  from  some  Argentine  friend. 
A  seat  in  the  pit  of  the  commonest  theatre  costs  about 
$1.30.  There  is  a  curious  system  of  paying  for  your 
seat  and  afterwards  paying  a  peso  for  the  privilege  of 
entering  the  theatre !  The  cinematographs,  which  are 
relatively  as  numerous  as  in  New  York  or  Chicago, 
have  a  uniform  charge  of  85  cts.  for  an  entertain- 
ment that  compares  badly  with  those  that  charge  a 
quarter  in  New  York.  Some  of  them  are  run  on  a 
system  of  three  sections  per  evening,  the  admission  be- 
ing 25  cts.  to  each  section,  but  these  are  of  the  cheaper 
class. 

In  short,  there  is  no  necessity  or  luxury  of  life  for 
which  one  has  not  to  pay  many  times  more  in  Buenos 
Ayres  or  in  Montevideo  than  in  any  North  American 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  147 

or  European  city.  Every  instance  I  have  taken  from 
my  personal  experience,  and  beyond  these  there  are 
doubtless  hundreds  of  examples  quite  as  remarkable, 
or  perhaps  still  more  noteworthy,  for  various  new- 
comers with  whom  I  came  into  touch,  who  were  settling 
in  the  city  and  under  the  necessity  of  furnishing  flats 
or  houses,  were  uniformly  aghast  at  the  prices  they 
were  asked  to  pay  for  the  most  modest  items  of  furni- 
ture, while  house  rents  would  have  turned  a  Fifth 
Avenue  landlord  green  with  envy.  I  had  personally 
to  buy  many  items  of  office  furniture,  the  prices  of 
which  I  do  not  recall,  with  the  exception  of  a  polished 
oak  table  of  North  American  manufacture,  which  in 
London  would  not  have  fetched  more  than  $15,  but 
which  cost  me  exactly  $70.  I  also  remember  that  a 
none-too-ostentatious  writing-desk  of  similar  origin 
cost  me  upwards  of  $125. 

No  wonder  such  conditions  of  life  should  be  press- 
ing heavily  on  the  resident  population,  with  whom 
la  carestia  de  la  vida  has  become  an  all-absorbing  topic 
of  conversation.  During  my  stay,  as  I  have  already 
mentioned,  a  strong  movement  was  initiated  by  the 
popular  journal  La  Argentina,  in  the  hope  of  bringing 
about  some  easing  of  the  terrible  burden,  with  what 
ultimate  success  I  know  not.  But  it  is  interesting  to 
quote  here  a  few  passages  from  the  leading  English 
daily  (the  Standard),  which,  like  all  the  Buenos  Ayres 
journals,  native  and  foreign  alike,  is  seldom  severely 
critical  of  the  economic  conditions  of  the  country,  be- 
ing, I  suppose,  nervously  afraid  of  saying  anything  that 
might  place  the  Argentine  in  an  unfavourable  light  to 
foreign  critics : 


i48  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

For  some  years  past  the  Press  has  been  urging  upon  the 
National  and  Municipal  authorities  the  necessity  of  adopting 
measures  for  improving  the  condition  of  the  working-classes  by 
reducing  the  cost  of  the  necessaries  of  life  and  by  providing 
convenient  and  hygienic  dwellings  for  workmen  and  their  fami- 
lies, but  hitherto,  the  people  having  remained  patiently  sub- 
missive to  the  economic  state  of  things  which  counteracts  the 
higher  remuneration  obtainable  for  labour,  the  authorities  have 
failed  in  their  duties  to  promote,  to  the  utmost  of  their  power, 
the  well-being  of  the  mass  of  the  population  of  this  great  city. 
Congress  has  voted  lavishly  the  resources  for  the  embellish- 
ment of  the  city,  for  the  construction  of  monumental  buildings 
and  monuments,  for  the  acquisition  of  useless  warships,  for  the 
granting  of  hundreds  of  pensions  to  persons  who  have  no  claim 
to  public  charity,  for  the  sending  of  representatives  to  con- 
gresses held  in  foreign  countries  upon  subjects  in  which  this 
Republic  is  not  interested,  and  special  embassies  and  commis- 
sions under  different  excuses,  to  enable  favoured  individuals  to 
make  the  tour  of  Europe  with  their  families  at  the  expense  of 
the  public,  but  there  is  never  any  surplus  revenue  to  permit 
the  diminution  of  the  duties  and  taxes  which  weigh  most  heav- 
ily upon  the  shoulders  least  able  to  bear  the  burden.  .  .  . 

The  place  of  meeting  was  in  the  Congress  plaza,  to  which, 
in  spite  of  the  threatening  state  of  the  weather,  the  people 
flowed  from  all  parts  of  the  city  and  suburbs,  and  at  the  ap- 
pointed time  marched  in  orderly  procession  to  the  Plaza  Mayo. 
A  deputation,  headed  by  Mr.  Adrian  Patroni,  a  member  of 
the  staff  of  La  Argentina,  was  received  in  the  Government 
House  by  the  Minister  of  Finance,  Dr.  Perez,  who  was  accom- 
panied by  his  private  secretary  and  by  the  Administrator  of  the 
Custom  House.  Mr.  Patroni  presented  to  the  Minister  a 
petition,  together  with  numerous  lists  of  thousands  of  signa- 
tures in  support  of  the  petition,  which  asks,  among  other  things, 
for  the  reduction  of  the  import  duties  on  the  necessaries  of  life ; 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  149 

for  a  diminution  of  the  cost  of  transport  of  articles  of  general 
consumption;  for  the  erection  of  10,000  houses  for  workmen 
and  their  families;  for  the  grant  of  sufficient  funds  for  paving 
all  the  streets  of  the  suburbs  in  order  to  give  work  to  the  un- 
employed as  well  as  to  improve  the  hygiene  of  the  city;  for 
the  prohibition  of  races  on  working  days,  and  for  the  closing 
of  the  hippodromes  (race-courses)  within  five  years.  .  .  . 

Numbers  of  people  in  the  procession  carried  placards  upon 
which  were  inscribed  the  requirements  of  the  proletariat,  in- 
cluding, besides  those  mentioned  in  the  petition,  demands  for 
the  concession  of  the  public  land,  with  facilities  for  the  pay- 
ment of  the  same,  to  those  who  are  willing  to  cultivate  it; 
for  personal  security  for  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  provinces 
and  territories;  for  the  improvement  of  the  roads;  for  the  sup- 
pression of  trusts  and  monopolies;  for  severe  legislation  against 
usury ;  for  regulations  of  the  auctioneers'  profession ;  for  issuing 
bonds  for  100,000,000  pesos  for  pavement  in  the  suburbs;  for 
the  reduction  of  license  taxes  on  the  vendors  of  articles  of  con- 
sumption; for  establishing  free  fairs  in  all  sections  of  the 
municipality;  for  permission  to  introduce  the  carcasses  of  ani- 
mals slaughtered  outside  the  boundaries  of  the  Municipality. 

Now  what  is  the  reason  for  this  extraordinary  ex- 
pense of  living?  It  is  not  a  matter  that  can  be  ex- 
plained in  a  few  sentences,  so  many  factors  are  at  work 
to  make  the  conditions  what  they  are.  I  can  at  most 
throw  a  beam  of  light  on  several  of  these  factors. 
Visitors  are  astonished,  for  instance,  to  be  told  that 
in  a  country  popularly  supposed  to  be  one  of  the  most 
naturally  fruitful  in  the  world  (though  there  is  no 
greater  illusion),  that  the  commonest  fruits  which  in 
North  America  and  Europe  are  within  the  reach  of  the 
very  poorest,  are  only  to  be  enjoyed  in  Buenos  Ayres 


i5o  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

by  the  rich.  The  country  is  almost  destitute  of  na- 
tive fruit-bearing  trees;  it  is  naturally  a  treeless,  bush- 
less,  wilderness  of  rich,  loamy  soil,  capable  of  pro- 
ducing enormous  crops  of  grain  if  properly  cultivated, 
or  of  maintaining  almost  fabulous  herds  of  cattle. 
The  contents  of  the  orchards  and  vineyards  that  do 
exist  must  be  reckoned  as  exotics.  Few  people,  in- 
deed, seem  to  trouble  about  the  cultivation  of  fruit  or 
vegetables,  though  the  vineyards  round  about  Mendoza 
on  the  Andine  frontier,  and  Bahia  Blanca  in  the  south 
of  the  Province  of  Buenos  Ayres,  show  what  unlimited 
possibilities  the  soil  possesses  for  the  vine.  Cattle  and 
grain  have  occupied  (and  not  unnaturally)  the  energies 
of  the  agriculturists,  but  fruit-growing  has  been  com- 
paratively neglected.  Even  so,  it  has  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  a  vicious  "  ring,"  who,  adopting  the  worst  of 
North  American  methods,  have  set  themselves  to  ex- 
ploit the  public.  In  the  islands  of  the  Tigre,  at  cart- 
ing distance  from  Buenos  Ayres,  where  fruit  and  to 
spare  could  be  grown  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  capital ; 
and  across  the  river,  in  Uruguay,  where  there  are  ideal 
conditions  for  fruit  culture,  and  where  peaches,  pears, 
apples,  and  other  fruits  are  almost  as  plentiful  as 
blackberries;  this  ring  has  seized  control,  and  I  have 
been  told  that  thousands  of  tons  of  peaches  and  other 
fruit  have  been  thrown  into  the  river  in  a  single  sea- 
son rather  than  that  the  harvest,  by  its  natural  abun- 
dance, should  have  been  permitted  to  lower  the  mar- 
ket prices. 

A  successful  English  fruit-grower,  attracted  by  the 
possibilities  of  Buenos  Ayres  and  the  crying  need  for 
supplies,  came  out  to  study  the  situation,  and  found 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  151 

that  although  he  could  easily  have  secured  ideal  or- 
chard land,  and  could  have  raised  enormous  crops  of 
apples,  pears,  peaches,  and  all  sorts  of  table  fruits,  he 
would  have  been  powerless  to  have  brought  his  prod- 
ucts to  the  market  in  face  of  this  sinister  ring.  He, 
therefore,  abandoned  the  project  and  returned  to  Eng- 
land. Thus,  within  walking  distance  of  orchards 
laden  with  peaches,  it  would  cost  you  6  cts.  for  one, 
and  in  Montevideo  the  conditions  are  more  outrage- 
ous still,  as  during  our  summer  there  we  bought  hun- 
dreds of  Californian  apples  at  a  cost  of  from  16  cts. 
to  25  cts.  each,  the  local  product,  at  best  inferior  to 
the  imported,  and  nearly  as  expensive,  being  then  in- 
accessible. 

One  effect  of  this  scarcity  of  fruit  —  and  the  vege- 
tables are  only  a  little  less  scarce,  the  country  people 
seldom  tasting  them !  —  is  the  vogue  of  English 
preserves,  which  are  served  as  table  delicacies.  Jams, 
which  the  London  workman  buys  at  12  cts.  a  pot,  are 
dealt  out  in  the  restaurants  in  spoonfuls  at  more  than 
12  cts.  a  helping!  Duke  inglesa  is  the  line  on  the 
menu  and  when  you  ask  for  it  (which  you  do  but  once) 
you  find  it  means  a  tablespoonful  of  common  straw- 
berry jam,  and  you  could  have  had  a  peche  melba  for 
the  money  at  home!  Common  12  ct.  pots  of  mar- 
malade are  sold  in  Buenos  Ayres  at  43  cts.  In  Mon- 
tevideo we  two  Gringos  were  responsible  for  the  con- 
sumption of  many  a  tin  of  American  fruit,  such  as  sells 
in  London  at  20  cts.  or  25  cts.,  the  uniform  price  of 
which  in  Montevideo  was  80  cts. 

In  the  matter  of  manufactured  articles,  one  nat- 
urally expects  to  pay  extra,  since  everything  has  to  be 


152  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

imported  from  Europe  or  the  United  States.  From 
the  latter  country  comes  most  of  the  polished  oak 
office  furniture,  on  which  there  is  an  infamous  import 
duty,  on  top  of  which  again  the  selling  agents  exact 
large  profits.  In  this  way  the  price  swells  to  four  or 
five  times  the  home  selling  cost.  Import  duties  on 
ready-made  clothes  and  every  variety  of  household 
wares  are  so  excessive  that  the  original  cost  is  aug- 
mented by  25  per  cent  to  50  per  cent,  before  the 
seller  secures  possession  of  the  goods.  The  seller  in 
turn  has  such  enormous  expenses  in  the  shape  of  high 
wages  to  assistants  and  iniquitous  rentals,  that  he  must 
clap  on  another  25  per  cent,  or  so  for  handling  ex- 
penses, and  finally,  as  he  himself  has  heavy  outgoings 
for  his  own  living  and  will  naturally  endeavour  to 
secure  some  little  luxuries  from  the  limited  possibilities 
open  to  him,  on  must  go  another  25  per  cent,  or  more 
for  profit. 

It  is  thus  one  vicious  circle,  which  results  in  every- 
body earning  far  more  money  than  he  can  earn  any- 
where else,  and  spending  four  or  five  times  more  to 
secure  about  one-half  of  the  comfort  or  luxury  he 
would  expect  to  enjoy  in  any  part  of  Europe  or  North 
America.  Net  result:  he  is,  perhaps,  "  ahead  of  the 
game,"  but  I  am  far  from  being  convinced  that  the 
European  or  the  North  American  could  not  equally 
keep  "  ahead  of  the  game  "  in  his  own  country,  earn- 
ing less,  spending  less,  enjoying  more,  and  saving 
equally.  There  is,  however,  to  some  temperaments  a 
certain  delight  in  having  money  pass  freely  through 
one's  hands,  and  assuredly  that  is  what  happens  in  the 


HOW  THE  MONEY  GOES  153 

Argentine.  If  the  money  comes  easily,  it  goes  with 
equal  ease,  and  in  the  getting  and  the  going  there  is  a 
certain  zest  which  brings  with  it  a  feeling  of  unusual 
prosperity. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SOME    PHASES    OF    SOCIAL    LIFE 

HERE  is  a  subject  which  every  writer  on  the  general 
life  of  a  town  or  a  country  is  expected  to  deal  with,  but 
in  the  case  of  Buenos  Ayres  one  is  reminded  of  the 
famous,  "  Story?  Lord  bless  you,  there's  none  to  tell, 
sir!  "  Save,  that  in  being  a  civilised  people,  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Argentine  must  needs  dwell  in  com- 
munities, "  social  life,"  as  we  understand  it,  is  difficult 
to  discover  in  these  communities.  Certainly,  a  teem- 
ing city  of  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  population,  with 
crowded  streets,  palatial  houses,  theatres,  lecture 
rooms,  concert  halls,  restaurants,  would  seem  to  sug- 
gest possibilities  of  "  social  life  ";  but  it  happens_tobe 
a  city  mainly  devoted  to  money-making,  those^  wno 
have  already  made  their  money  maintaining  a  ^centre 
of  social  life  somewhat  remote  from  the  Calle  Florida ; 
as  far  away,  indeed,  as  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  and  the 
Champs  Elysees,  for  is  not  Paris  the  social  Mecca  of 
the  successful  Argentine? 

Still  they  are  few  indeed  thus  privileged,  in  com- 
parison with  the  multitude  who  have  to  make  the  best 
of  things  as  they  are  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Even  during 
the  terrible  months  of  summer,  those  who  can  afford 
to  fly  from  its  stifling  atmosphere  to  the  rustic  sur- 
roundings of  the  Hills  of  Cordoba,  to  the  sea-washed 
shores  of  Mar  del  Plata,  or  to  the  still  more  attractive 
riverside  suburbs  of  Montevideo,  constitute  a  small 
section  of  the  community. 

154 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  155 

There  is,  of  course,  an  important  section  of  the  com- 
munity who  annually  quit  the  city  to  pass  the  spring 
and  summer  months  in  the  "  Camp."  These  are  the 
estantieros,  whose  wealth  comes  entirely  from  their 
country  estates,  where  life  in  the  winter  months  de- 
clines to  the  nadir  of  dismal  dulness  and  discomfort, 
so  that  they  reside  for  some  seven  or  eight  months  of 
the  year  in  the  city,  and  remove  to  the  country  for 
the  warmer  season,  during  which  time  the  head  of  the 
family  may  inspect  and  revise  the  work  that  has  been 
going  on  in  his  absence  under  the  direction  of  his 
mayordomo,  while  the  members  of  his  family,  (which 
may  include  what  we  would  consider  half-a-dozen 

separate     "  families,"     as     tlift     pai-riarrhal     ftysf-pm     of 

family  life  still  obtains  among  the  Argentines)  will 
•  enjoy  tfiemselves  in  a  variety  of  simple  and  healthy 
country  pursuits.  When  residing  in  Buenos  Ayres,  the 
estancieros  who  have  not  placed  their  affairs  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  estate  agents,  as  is  the  custom  with 
those  who  prefer  to  live  in  Paris,  maintain  offices  and 
clerical  staffs  like  any  other  business  men,  for  the  work 
of  an  Argentine  estancia  entails  a  vast  amount  of  or- 
ganisation. 

With  the  family  life  of  the  Argentines,  however,  I 
do  not  for  the  moment  wish  to  concern  myself,  that 
being  a  subject  of  peculiar  interest,  which  I  purpose 
treating  at  some  length  in  a  later  chapter.  For  the 
moment,  my  endeavour  is  only  to  register  such  evi- 
dences of  the  outward  social  life  of  the  people  as  came 
within  my  range  of  observation  during  my  stay  in 
Buenos  Ayres  and  my  visits  to  different  parts  of  the 
country.  Conditions  in  the  capital  city  differ,  of 


1 56  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

course,  in  various  ways,  from  those  in  the  larger 
provincial  towns,  such  as  Rosario,  Cordoba,  and  Men- 
doza,  and  still  more  widely  from  the  life  of  the  smaller 
rural  communities;  but  we  must  always  bear  in  mind 
in  speaking  of  the  Argentine  that  more  than  a  fifth  — 
and  the  most  important  fifth  —  of  the  entire  popula- 
tion is  concentrated  in  the  capital,  so  that  while  Lon- 
don is  not  the  embodiment  of  England,  nor  New  York 
of  the  United  States,  Buenos  Ayres  does  stand  for 
Argentina. 

In  previous  chapters  I  have  expressed  my  feelings 
of  surprise  and  disappointment  at  the  unlooked-for 
dulness  of  the  so-called  "  Paris  of  South  America." 
Never  shall  I  forget  the  deadness  of  our  first  night  in 
Buenos  Ayres  —  a  deadness  thatTstruck  us  like  a  nip- 
ping wind,  chilling  to  the  bone  all  hope  of  bright  and 
entertaining  evenings.  It  was  an  impression  which  the 
succeeding  months,  when  we  maintained  a  hungry  and 
pathetic  quest  for  social  interest,  did  but  little  to  re- 
move. Perhaps  it  was  due  in  some  degree  to  the 
grossly  exaggerated  and  misleading  pictures  of  the 
city  spread  abroad  by  writers  more  intent  on  flattery 
and  official  patronage  than  on  the  simple  narration  of 
the  truth.  Almost  alone  among  the  many  who  have 
written  on  the  life  of  Buenos  Ayres,  M.  Jules  Huret 
has  ventured  to  hint  at  the  appalling  dulness  of  the 
social  life  and  the  lack  of  interest,  especially  for  tnose 

^ef  the  younger  generation. 

— The  mu!>L  v'iliil  factor  m  determining  the  social  life 
of  any  community  is,  perhaps,  the  position  of  the 
womenfolk.  In  this  respect,  there  is  probably  no  city 
in  the  world  on  which  so  much  has  been  written,  yet 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  157 

concerning  which  the  untravelled  reader  entertains 
more  erroneous  ideas.  For  this  we  have  chiefly  to 
thank  the  sensational  journalism  of  Europe  and  North 
America,  which,  on  the  flimsiest  of  bases,  has  built  up 
in  the  public  mind  the  conception  of  Buenos  Ayres  as 
the  metropolis  of  Vice,  the  world's  mart  of  the  White 
Slave  Traffic.  Bearing  in  mind  much~ot  what  has 
been  written  on  this  unsavoury  topic,  and  more  that  is 
circulated  world-wide  in  irresponsible  gossip,  the  visi- 
tor might  expect  to  find  the  outward  conditions  of 
New  York,  London  and  Paris  reproduced  on  a  many- 
times  magnified  scale.  Nothing  could  be  further  from 
the  truth.  There  are  no  large  cities  that  I  have  visited 
in  Europe  or  North  America, —  and  I  have  visited 
most  of  them  —  outwardly  so  free  of  social  offence  as 
Buenos  Ayres  and  the  other  great  cities  of  South 
America.  By  comparison,  New  York,  Chicago,  New 
Orleans,  even  Washington  and  Philadelphia,  would 
seem  sinks  of  iniquity.  Go  to  the  races  at  Palermo, 
visit  any  theatre  in  Buenos  Ayres,  with  two  or  perhaps 
three  exceptions,  dine  at  any  of  the  few  restaurants 
where  a  good  meal  is  obtainable,  wander  the  streets 
at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night,  and  you  will  never 
have  a  moment's  embarrassment  from  the  social  pest 
which  obtrudes  itself  so  flauntingly  in  New  York  or 
London.  This  is  one  of  the  few  things  they  regulate 
better  in  Buenos  Ayres.  All  places  of  public  resort 
are  barred  to  the  demi-mondaine,  and  as  she  is 
officially  known,  this  makes  for  a  certain  surface  cleanli- 
ness of  society,  which  is  doubtless  a  delusion  so  far  as 
the  essential  morals  of  the  people  are  concerned,  and 
may  be  written  down  an  organised  hypocrisy,  but  the 


158  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

outward  evidences  are   as   stated  and  not  otherwise. 

Furthermore,  I  know  of  no  cleaner  journalism  than 
that  of  South  America.  Even  the  papers  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world  compare  unfavourably  in  this  respect; 
yes,  those  we  deem  highly  "  respectable  "  !  Ofce  might 
expect  to  find  among  a  Latin  people  something  of  the 
Continental  levity  in  the  treatment  of  this  subject,  but 
for  propriety  and  sobriety,  I  do  not  believe  it  would 
be  possible  to  better  the  journals,  even  of  the  lighter 
class,  which  are  published  in  Buenos  Ayres.  They 
are  almost  absurdly  respectable;  the  result,  it  may  be, 
of  a  very  obvious  lack  of  humour  in  the  people.  A 
further  consideration  is  the  intense  devotion  of  the  Ar- 
gentine tojainilyjife,  and  to  family  TiTe  of  an  alniost 
"Moorish  elcclusiveness,  so  that,  with  very  few  excep- 
tions, almost  any  publication  issuing  in  Buenos  Ayres 
may  safely  pass  from  the  hands  of  the  parents  into 
those  of  the  youngest  children. 

This  will  be  something  of  a  revelation  to  many  of 
my  readers,  but  when  I  come  to  deal  with  "  The  Ar- 
gentine at  Home,"  the  factors  which  make  for  this 
outward  cleanliness  of  social  life  will  become  apparent. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  position  of  the  Argentine 
woman,  which  so  vitally  affects  the  social  life  of  the 
country,  corresponds  in  no  way  to  Anglo-Saxon  no- 
tions, and  explains  much  of  the  dulness,  artificiality, 
and  insincerity  it  is  my  immediate  business  to  describe. 
I  remember  very  well  reading  in  the  pages  of  M. 
Huret's  admirable  work  Del  Plata  a  la  Cordillera  de 
I os  Andes: 

An  Argentine  assured  me  that,  on  meeting  in  the  street  a 
lady  whom  he  had  known  in  his  youth,  and  whom  he  is  entitled 


MARBLE  FOUNTAIN  IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  PASEO  COLON. 


PLAZA  FRANCIA  IN  THE  AVENIDA  ALVEAR. 

The  memorial  is  an  offering  of  the  French  "Colony"  to  the  Argentine  on  its  Cen- 
tenary in  IQIO.  Various  monuments,  the  gifts  of  other  "Colonies,"  ornament  different 
parts  nf  the  onpit •>!  r'tv. 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  159 

to  address  familiarly  (a  la  cual  tutea),  he  is  careful  not  to  stop 
and  speak  to  her,  lest  in  doing  so  he  might  compromise  the  lady. 

Indeed,  this  Argentine  informed  the  French  writer 
that  in  such  a  case  he  preferred  not  to  notice  the  lady 
at  all,  but  to  look  away  from  her!  Here,  surely,  is 
a  suggestive  fact.  The  statement  seemed  to  me  so 
remarkable  that  I  raised  the  point  with  various  Ar- 
gentines, and  always  had  it  confirmed,  one  gentleman 
assuring  me  that  he  would  not  even  go  so  far  as  to 
pause  for  a  moment  to  speak  in  the  street  with  his 
sister-in-law  if  she  were  unaccompanied.  He  thought 
it  was  an  extremely  foolish  social  custom  but  considered 
it  was  one  to  which  every  gentleman  was  bound  to 
conform. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  at  a  glance  that  one  form  of 
social  intercourse  so  familiar  to  us  does  not  exist  in 
the  Argentine,  which  country  is  typical  in  this  of  almost 
all  the  South  American  Republics.  How  far  this  must 
condition  the  social  life,  any  one  can  guess.  The 
women  are  permitted  somejrieasur^  of  freednrn  until 
they  become  engaged,  and  may,  under  strict  chaperon^ 
"age,  attend  formal  receptions  and  balls,  where  the 
Ttmest  of  starchy  manners  are  de  rigueur.  But  after 
marriage,  they_withdraw  to  the  seclusion  of  their  own 
hoTnes~  and~  devote  themselves  to  the  care  of  their 
families,  scrdgm  takmgjjart  in  any  social  gaieties,  even 
l*oing  veryTittleTtolhe  theatre! 

One  consequence  of  this  is  an  extraordinary  pre- 
ponderance of  men  at  all  pla^s  of  amusement.  Him 
probably  under-estimating  the  proportion  when  I  say 
that  in  almost  any  audience,  with  the  exception  of  that 
at  the  Teatro  Colon,  seventy-five  per  cent,  would  be 


160  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

men.  More,  I  have  often  deemed  it  a  pathetic  com- 
mentary on  the  arid  life  of  the  place  to  enter  one  of  the 
many  cinematograph  theatres  and  note  the  rows  upon 
rows  of  men,  with  no  more  than  a  handful  of  women 
sprinkled  among  them.  Often  in  an  audience  num- 
bering probably  five  hundred,  there  would  not  be  more 
than  a  dozen  ladies  and  most  of  these  foreigners.  It 
is  a  condition  of  things  that  tends  to  perpetuate  it- 
self, as  my  wife,  even  with  me  at  her  side,  always  felt 
a  little  ill  at  ease  where  so  few  of  her  sex  seemed  to 
be  expected,  although,  without  exception,  the  enter- 
tainments might  have  been  arranged  for  a  party  of 
Sunday-school  children,  especially  if  it  contained  a  num- 
ber*of  "  Budges  "  who  revelled  in  "  bluggy  "  subjects, 
as  hairbreadth  escapes  and  the  adventures  of  Nick 
Winter,  Sherlock  (often  rendered  "Shylock") 
Holmes,  and  other  preposterous  "  detectives  "  were 
the  staple  fare. 

This  tremendous  overplus  of  men  in  the  places  of 
amusement  admits  of  two  explanations.  First,  we 
have  the  unusual  social  custom  which  allows  of  the 
husband  acting  as  vicarious  pleasure-seeker  for  wife 
and  family,  so  that  no  Argentine  lady  complains  when 
her  husband  goes  out  alone  to  the  theatre  and  winds 
up  the  night  at  his  club,  returning  long  after  she  has 
been  asleep!  Secondly,  we  have  to  remember  that  in 
all  cities  populated  chiefly  by  emigrants,  large  num- 
bers of  single  men  are  to  be  encountered.  It  is  the 
experience  of  business  people  in  Buenos  Ayres  who  em- 
ploy considerable  staffs,  that  a  large  proportion  of 
their  workers  are  youngish  men  who  'seem  to  be  ab- 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  161 

solutely  without  family  ties  or  attachments  of  any  kind, 
lonely  wanderers  from  the. far  lands  of  Europe. 

A  further  influence  militating  against  the  women- 
kind  enjoying  such  entertainment  as  is  to  be  found  in 
Buenos  Ayres  is  the  widespread  area  of  the  city. 
With  a  population  not  very  much  larger  than  half  that 
of  Paris,  Buenos  Ayres  occupies  vastly  more  space, 
owing  to  the  system  of  one-story  houses,  which  is  still 
universal  beyond  the  congested  business  area  of  the 
town.  The  tram  service,  one  of  the  best  regulated  in 
the  world,  as  it  is  also  one  of  the  cheapest,  affords  only 
a  very  inadequate  means  of  communication  between 
the  further  suburbs  and  the  theatre  district,  in  Maipii 
and  Esmeralda,  while  the  primitive  state  of  the  Subur- 
ban roadways  make  travel  by  coach,  or  taxi-cab,  a 
hazardous  and  painful  experience.  So  it  happens  that 
we  find  nowhere  those  bright  and  attractive  supper 
restaurants  with  merry  groups  of  pleasure-seekers,  men 
and  women,  discussing  the  play  they  have  just  come 
from;  but,  in  their  place,  many  cafes,  exclusively  oc- 
cupied by  soft-hatted  men  smoking  and  drinking.  The 
most  pretentious  restaurant  in  the  city  shuts  its  doors 
immediately  after  dinner,  and  even  during  dinner  the 
ladies  are  always  in  an  insignificant  minority.  Gaiety, 
forsooth!  Who  comes  to  look  for  that  in  Buenos 
Ayres  has  undertaken  one  of  the  most  barren  of  pur- 
suits. 

As  for  the  character  of  the  resorts,  little  that  is  fa- 
vourable can  be  said.  I  remember  with  what  delight 
I  used  to  scan  the  theatre  advertisements  in  the 
columns  of  La  Prensa  before  I  sailed  for  the  River 


i6a  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Plate,  and  what  pleasures  we  promised  ourselves,  my 
wife  and  I,  when  the  day's  work  would  be  done ! 
Places  of  amusement  there  are  in  abundance,  and  their 
advertisements  make  a  brave  showing  in  the  newspa- 
pers, but  there  are  rarely  more  than  two,  or  it  may  be 
three,  entertainments  that  are  worthy  of  a  visit.  South 
America  is  the  happy  hunting  ground  of  all  sorts  of 
incompetent  Spanish  actors  and  draggle-tailed  Span- 
ish dramatic  companies.  To  see  "  The  Merry 
Widow,"  "Casta  Susana,"  or  "The  Count  of 
Luxembourg  "  performed  by  a  company  destitute  of 
vocal  talent,  with  shabby,  misfit  scenery,  and  a  ward- 
robe so  poverty  stricken  that  not  a  single  actor  wears 
a  suit  of  his  size  (the  whole  company  of  them  re- 
sembling, in  evening  dress,  a  scratch  lot  of  waiters  from 
a  Soho  chop-house),  the  orchestra  clad  in  the  mot- 
liest  mixture  of  tweed  suits,  while  the  voice  of  the 
prompter,  whose  sweaty  shirt  sleeves  obtrude  from  his 
ugly  box  in  the  fore-front  of  the  stage,  is  heard  above 
that  of  the  actor  —  to  witness  this  is  by  no  means  a 
delectable  experience;  yet  such  is  the  manner  of  the 
fare  most  frequently  offered  in  the  theatres  of  the  city. 
True,  from  time  to  time  excellently  organised  Span- 
ish and  Italian  companies  do  occupy  the  principal 
theatres,  and  once  a  year  there  is  a  visit  from  some 
eminent  French  actor,  with  a  picked  company,  but  on 
the  whole  dramatic  entertainment  is  pitifully  poor,  the 
pieces  being  staged  in  a  slovenly  and  inadequate  style. 
The  State-aided  Opera,  which  has  its  home  in  the  great 
Columbus  Theatre,  is,  of  course,  a  national  institution, 
and  as  such  plays  a  very  important  part  in  the  social 
life  of  the  richer  classes,  though  the  bulk  of  the  people 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  163 

have  never  seen  more  than  the  outside  of  the  building. 
Opera  is  here  staged  as  perfectly  as  in  the  finest  opera- 
houses  of  Europe,  and  not  a  few  "  stars  "  first  twinkled 
in  Buenos  Ayres  before  their  magnitude  was  recognised 
in  London  or  Paris.  On  the  strength  of  the  Opera, 
Buenos  Ayres  enjoys  the  reputation  of  being  a  very 
musical  city.  In  the  paraiso,  or  gallery,  you  might  dis- 
cover a  considerable  number  of  Italians  who  had  been 
attracted  to  the  Colon  out  of  a  genuine  delight  in  the 
performance,  but  in  most  other  parts  of  the  house,  and 
most  of  all  in  the  highly-priced  boxes,  the  people  are 
there  to  see  each  other :  the  ladies  to  study  the  dresses 
of  the  other  ladies,  the  gentlemen  to  display  in  the 
persons  of  their  wives  and  daughters  the  substantial 
condition  of  their  banking  accounts  —  or  of  their 
credit.  Nay,  even  during  the  most  dramatic  parts  of 
"  Aida,"  "  Manon  Lescaut,"  or  "  Otello,"  I  have  seen 
quite  as  many  ladies  in  the  audience  with  their  backs  to 
the  stage,  chattering  to  friends,  as  there  were  others 
following  the  play.  And  in  the  cazuela  (a  word 
which  in  domestic  use  signifies  a  stew,  and  theatrically 
a  gallery  reserved  entirely  for  ladies  —  also  something 
of  a  stew)  the  chattering  between  the  fan-flapping  oc- 
cupants is  so  continuous  that  on  a  sudden  lowering  of 
the  music  one  is  sure  to  hear  voices  from  the  cazuela 
ringing  out  by  contrast.  For  the  rest,  the  Opera  is  a 
function  conducted  with  the  most  tremendous  gravity, 
and  although  the  season  is  comparatively  short  (and 
usually  unprofitable  to  the  impresarios),  it  is  not  with- 
out its  uses  in  enabling  the  native  community  to  see  a 
little  more  of  each  other  than  the  restrictions  of  their 
social  life  would  otherwise  allow.  To  the  stranger, 


1 64  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

however,  it  is  socially  useless,  and  to  the  mere  lover 
of  music  who  could  appreciate  the  excellence  of  its 
representations,  it  is  almost  prohibitively  expensive, 
unless  he  or  she  is  brave  enough  to  incur  the  odium  of 
being  "  spotted  "  in  the  five  shilling  gallery  or  paraiso, 
where  no  English  resident  of  any  position  in  the  town 
would  condescend  to  ascend.  The  consequence  is,  you 
will  seldom  meet  an  English  resident  who  has  ever 
been  to  a  performance  in  the  Colon. 

Of  recent  years,  a  movement  in  the  direction  of  pro- 
viding healthier  entertainment  of  a  varied  description 
for  the  family  circle  on  certain  afternoons  of  the  week, 
much  after  the  style  of  the  American  vaudeville,  has 
been  growing.  Thus,  on  Saturday  and  Sunday  after- 
noons during  our  stay,  one  used  to  see  many  ladies  and 
young  children  at  the  Casino,  but  at  night  it  was  the 
rarest  thing  to  discover  in  the  whole  crowded  theatre 
a  respectable  woman.  Occasionally,  an  American  or 
English  lady  ventured  with  her  husband  to  one  of  the 
boxes,  where  it  was  possible  to  sit  behind  a  screen  and 
see  the  performance  without  being  seen,  but  every  seat 
in  the  pit,  the  circle,  and  the  galleries  was  occupied  by 
a  man,  and  invariably  there  would  be  at  least  one  turn 
that  was  highly  objectionable,  and  rendered  the  more 
so  by  the  conduct  of  the  audience,  who,  slow  to  re- 
spond to  anything  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  recog- 
nises as  humour,  have  an  ever-ready  nose  for  sugges- 
tiveness,  and  when  that  is  forthcoming,  do  not  merely 
laugh  at  it,  but  render  it  the  more  offensive  by  uttering 
all  sorts  of  obscene  noises. 

The  Casino,  the  Theatre  Royal,  the  Scala,  and  the 
Parisiana,  during  my  stay,  whatever  may  be  the  case 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  165 

now,  were  the  evening  haunts  of  the  younger  men. 
The  first  named  was  the  only  one  that  attempted  any- 
thing like  vaudeville  entertainment,  the  majority  of  the 
artistes  being  usually  American  or  English,  and  the 
difficulty  of  maintaining  a  programme  was  so  great  that 
the  management  had  to  content  themselves  with  what 
they  could  get  in  the  shape  of  second-  and  third-rate 
"  turns  "  from  overseas,  so  that  often  the  variety  was 
not  remarkable,  two  or  three  groups  of  comic  acrobats 
being  included  in  one  programme,  and  we  all  know 
that  there  is  no  variety  in  comic  acrobats.  The  other 
three  resorts  were  deplorable  imitations  of  the  Pari- 
sian houses  that  specialise  in  revues.  W]thjtfie_excep- 
tion  of  the  Casino,  these  theatres  were  all  so  small  that 
they  would  not  have  been  considered  suitable  in  Amer- 
ica for  more  than  lecture  rooms  or  "  picture  "  halls. 
The  revues  were  usually  so  stupid,  the  scenery  so  con- 
temptible, the  performers  so  inferior,  that  I  always 
felt  sorry  the  audience  had  nothing  better  to  do  than 
waste  their  time  in  such  inanity.  French  was  the  lan- 
guage of  the  revues,  with  occasional  Spanish  songs  and 
interludes,  and  there  was  only  one  joke  which  seemed 
to  have  a  universal  appeal  —  some  reference  to 
"  606."  Examples :  A  miserable  youth  comes  on 
to  visit  a  burlesque  doctor.  He  begins  explaining  how 
he  had  met  a  young  lady  in  a  restaurant,  using  words 
of  the  most  suggestive  character,  each  sentence  con- 
taining a  pun  on  a  number.  "  Ah,"  says  the  doctor, 
"  your  case  must  be  treated  arithmetically."  As  the 
patient  proceeds  with  his  tale,  the  doctor  seizes  on 
every  punning  phrase  containing  a  number,  jots  these 
down  on  a  slate,  adds  the  lot  up,  result  909;  but  re- 


166  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

versing  the  slate  he  exhibits  to  the  audience  "  606." 
Then  there  is  feeble  laughter  of  fools!  Or  a  young 
lady  has  a  song  of  the  telephone,  and  the  refrain  is 
"Please  give  me  number  606."  Faugh!  But  the 
spectacle  of  an  English  acrobat  on  the  Casino  stage, 
dressed  as  a  Highlandman,  who  at  certain  times  pulled 
a  string  that  raised  the  back  part  of  his  kilt  and  dis- 
played "  606  "  painted  on  the  seat  of  his  "  shorts  " 
filled  me  with  disgust.  (Perhaps  it  should  be  ex- 
plained that  "  606  "  is  a  cure  for  syphilis.) 

The  music  in  these  revues  usually  consisted  of  a 
rechauffe  of  such  up-to-date  tunes  as  "  Ta,  ra,  ra,  boom 
de  ay!  "  "  A  Bicycle  Built  for  Two,"  "  There  are  nice 
girls  everywhere, "  and  many  others  that  have  run  their 
little  day  in  the  "  halls  "  of  New  York  and  London. 
In  a  word,  anything  more  despicable  in  the  matter  of 
entertainment  could  not  be  conceived,  yet  in  these 
poor,  pitiful  play-houses  the  young  men  and  older 
bucks  of  Buenos  Ayres  were  supposed  to  be  "  seeing 
life." 

At  one  of  the  theatres  mentioned,  a  group  of  four- 
teen English  girls  were  employed  as  dancers  and  sing- 
ers practically  all  the  time  I  stayed  in  Buenos  Ayres. 
They  would  certainly  have  found  the  greatest  difficulty 
in  earning  a  livelihood  in  the  same  way  in  their  own 
land,  and  it  made  me  sad  to  hear  their  poor  thin  voices 
uttering  some  drivel  about  "  coons  "  and  "  moons  " 
which  to  me  was  only  partially  intelligible  in  my  na- 
tive language,  and  must  have  been  so  much  meaning- 
less rubbish  to  the  majority  of  the  audience.  The  few 
painted  ladies  who  frequented  those  places  in  the  even- 
ings were  a  sorrowful  group  of  regular  attenders,  ad- 


I 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  167 

mitted,  I  believe,  at  half  price,  and  gave  the  final  touch 
of  squalid  meanness  to  the  scene. 

So  much  for  the  "  gaiety  "  of  Buenos  Ayres!  The 
reader  will  probably  now  begin  to  realise  what  an  at- 
tractive place  it  is  for  the  young  American  or  Britisher. 
Poor  young  man,  there  is  no  one  for  whom  I  feel 
more  pity.  He  is  at  his  wits'  end  for  wholesome 
amusement  after  business  hours,  and  his  case  is  even 
worse  than  that  of  the  young  Frenchman  or  the 
Spaniard,  who  can  occasionally,  at  least,  enjoy  some 
reasonably  good  performance  in  his  native  tongue,  for 
English  dramatic  companies  cannot  possibly  find  suf- 
ficient support  to  warrant  the  expense  of  the  long 
voyage  out  and  back.  When  I  come  to  deal  with  the 
life  of  the  British  community,  I  shall  describe  the 
straits  they  are  put  to  for  social  amusement  and  dis- 
traction, and  the  ingenuity  with  which  they  contrive 
to  render  their  lives  a  little  less  unpleasant  than  cir- 
cumstances conspire  to  make  them.  _But_in  the  gen- 
eral social  life  of  the  town,  the  English  take  little  or 
no  part,  keeping  to  themselves  with  their  usual  ex- 
clusiveness,  rendered  the  greater  here  by  the  almost 
impenetrable  barrier  which  the  criollos,  or  older  na- 
tive families  present  to  all  advances  from  without. 

In  this  regard,  the  British  are  not  singular,  as  the 
French,  German,  Spanish,  Italian,  and  other  nationali- 
ties all  maintain  in  a  very  marked  degree  their  racial 
sympathies,  although  assimilating  more  quickly  with 
the  native  element  in  the  matter  of  language,  which 
remains  the  great  stumbling  block  of  the  Anglo-Saxons. 
Each  community  maintains  its  own  clubs,  with  many 
sub-divisions  among  Italians  and  Spaniards,  the  Nea- 


1 68  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

politans,  for  instance,  having  their  meeting-places  apart 
from  other  Italians  —  indeed  most  decent  Italians  re- 
fuse to  recognise  the  Neapolitans  as  fellow-country- 
men —  and,  among  Spaniards,  the  Asturians  especially 
maintaining  their  local  patriotism  and  racial  interests  in 
this  way.  These  clubs,  almost  innumerable,  afford  the 
men  a  common  meeting  place  to  discuss  their  fortunes 
in  the  new  land  of  promise  and  to  recall  their  old  days 
at  home,  and  as  the  social  side  of  them  includes  fre- 
quent concerts,  banquets,  and  balls,  the  women  of  the 
company  have  also  opportunities  for  appearing  in  their 
best  clothes  and  seeing  photographs  of  themselves  in 
groups  published  in  Caras  y  Caretas,  the  principal  illus- 
trated weekly,  whose  every  issue  contains  a  large  num- 
ber of  such  items. 

The  social  side  of  journalism  is  even  more  highly 
developed  in  Buenos  Ayres  and  in  South  America  gen- 
erally  than  in  North  America,  so  that  one  judging 
only  by  the  newspapers  and  the  illustrated  periodicals 
might  suppose  there  was  nowhere  in  the  world  such 
sociability  as  in  these  Latin  Republics.  In  Buenos 
Ayres  and  in  Montevideo  elaborate  guias  soclales  are 
published  annually,  containing  lists  of  "  At-home 
Days  "  and  other  information  of  a  personal  character, 
while  La  Prensa,  La  Nacion,  El  Diario,  and  all  the 
other  newspapers  devote  whole  columns  daily  to  the 
movements  of  the  local  nobodies.  No  possible  occa- 
sion for  a  banquete  is  allowed  to  pass,  and  to  the  Eng- 
glish  reader  Caras  y  Car  etas  is  a  weekly  joy,  with  its 
dozens  of  photographs  of  these  quaint  little  functions. 

Senor  Don  Alonso  Moreno  Martinez  (let  us  say) 
is  going  to  Rio  de  Janeiro  on  business  for  two  or  three 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  169 

weeks.  The  friends  of  Don  Alonso  thereupon  ask 
him  to  dine  with  them  at  the  Sportsman  Restaurant, 
where,  in  two  hours'  time,  they  will  demolish  a  quite 
eatable  dinner  of  five  or  six  courses.  Meanwhile,  one 
of  the  ten  or  fifteen  hosts  of  Don  Alonso  has  taken 
care  to  warn  the  photographer  of  Caras  y  Caretas,  of 
Fray  Mocho,  and  perhaps  of  P.  B.  T.,  and  these  three 
photographers  turn  up  in  the  course  of  the  two  hours, 
make  flashlight  photographs  of  the  little  handful  of 
diners,  none  of  whom  will  be  in  evening  dress,  the 
group  presenting  the  oddest  assortment  of  clothes,  and, 
behold,  in  the  next  issues  of  these  widely  circulated 
periodicals,  excellent  reproductions  of  the  said  photo- 
graphs, inscribed:  "Banquet  offered  by  his  friends 
to  Senor  Don  Alonso  Moreno  Martinez,  in  view  of 
his  departure  for  Rio  de  Janeiro,  where  he  will  ab- 
sent himself  for  a  few  weeks  on  affairs  of  importance." 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  thousands  of  these 
photographs  are  published  yearly  in  the  pictorial  press, 
and  when  the  honoured  guest  is  a  little  more  important 
than  my  imaginary  Don  Alonso,  then  the  big  daily 
newspapers  are  pleased  to  publish  the  photograph, 
while  the  provinces  send  up  to  Buenos  Ayres  scores  of 
them  every  week.  It  is  all  very  pathetic,  but  very  elo- 
quent of  the  low  level  of  social  interest. 

Even  the  Races,  so  important  an  institution  in 
Buenos  Ayres,  are  conducted  in  a  way  that  almost  en- 
tirely eliminates  the  social  element.  Among  the  vast 
crowd  that  frequent  the  splendid  course  at  Palermo  on 
Thursday  and  Sunday  afternoons,  except  in  the  enclo- 
sure belonging  to  the  Jockey  Club,  very  few  women  are 
to  be  seen.  The  men  are  there  in  mobs,  not  to  enjoy 


170  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  races,  in  which  they  take  no  genuine  sportive  in- 
terest, but  in  the  hope  of  making  a  bit  of  money.  An 
American  lady  said  to  me  she  had  never  been  at  so 
quiet  a  demonstration  before;  she  considered  King  Ed- 
ward's funeral  was  altogether  a  livelier  ceremony ! 
The  undemonstrative  character  of  the  people  is,  to  us 
supposedly  phlegmatic  Anglo-Saxons,  really  extraor- 
dinary. I  have  an  impression  that  it  arises  from  an  in- 
born laziness  of  character  which  is  not  altogether  for- 
eign to  their  nature.  They  are  chary  of  giving  ap- 
plause in  the  theatre,  and  they  sit  dull  and  motionless 
before  the  most  exciting  films  in  the  picture  palaces. 
At  the  Races  there  is  a  feeling  of  sullen  determination 
to  get  back  twenty  pesos  or  more  for  the  two  they  have 
speculated. 

With  all  this  lack  of  wholesome  interest  in  life,  out- 
side the  brute  struggle  for  the  dollar,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  there  should  be  a  widespread  devotion  to  gam- 
bling and  the  card  table,  most  of  the  social  centres 
already  mentioned  being  also  resorts  of  gamblers. 
And  with  all  its  veneer  of  socialness,  there  is  no  genuine 
public  spirit  throughout  the  heterogeneous  community. 
In  a  minor  way  this  was  illustrated  in  February  of 
1913,  when,  owing  to  certain  regulations  which  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  imposed  upon  the  shops 
selling  drugs  and  perfumes,  some  1,340  hairdressers 
and  about  400  drugshops  declared  themselves  "  on 
strike  "  by  temporarily  closing  their  premises,  to  the 
serious  inconvenience  of  the  invalids  and  the  dandies. 
The  action  drew  forth  the  strongest  denunciation  of 
the  Press  for  its  anti-humanitarian  character,  but  I 
noticed  that  quite  as  much  sympathy  was  expressed 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  171 

with  the  male  population  who  would  thus  be  placed 
under  the  painful  necessity  of  shaving  themselves  for 
a  day  or  two,  as  with  the  suffering  humanity  whose  need 
for  medicine  makes  the  druggist's  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful businesses  in  the  city. 

There  is  truly  little  humanitarian  feeling  evide"nT"in 
the  soci aj:liie_of^BuenQ&. Ayr e^,  although  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  Asistencia  publica  is  in  every  respect  ad- 
mirable and  its  first  aid  to  the  injured  and  the  sick 
leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  The  Hospital  organisa- 
tion into  whose  care  the  patient  passes  after  leaving  the 
hands  of  the  Asistencia  is  by  no  means  so  well  con- 
ducted, so  that  while  you  may  rely  on  being  taken  to  a 
hospital  in  the  best  possible  way,  Heaven  help  you 
after  you  have  been  left  there !  While  it  is  true  that 
the  Argentine  is  far  in  advance  of  most  of  the  other  re- 
publics in  its  provisions  for  public  vaccination,  and 
also  in  its  sane  policy  of  making  vaccination  com- 
pulsory, the  official  treatment  of  disease  always 
seemed  to  me  to  suggest  a  nervous  dread  of  the  pos- 
sibilities, a  feverish  readiness  to  test  all  the  latest  Euro- 
pean innovations  for  its  suppression.  The  memory 
of  past  plagues  is  a  potent  factor  in  this;  recollections 
and  traditions  of  the  devastations  wrought  in  Buenos 
Ayres  by  Yellow  Jack  a  generation  ago  do  much  to 
spread  the  nervousness  when  there  is  any  whisper  of 
epidemics  in  other  South  American  ports. 

January  29,  1913,  was  the  second  anniversary  of  the 
first  great  epidemic  of  yellow  fever  that  decimated 
the  population  of  Buenos  Ayres,  and  the  anniversary 
coincided  with  an  outbreak  of  bubonic  plague  in  the 
northern  city  of  Tucuman.  The  occasion  was  seized 


172  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

by  the  very  competent  and  vigorous  writer  of  "  Topics 
of  the  Day  "  in  the  Buenos  Ayres  Standard  to  deliver 
an  excellent  homily  on  "  Disease  as  a  Hygienist." 
From  this  I  quote  a  few  passages  which  I  think  worthy 
of  attention,  coming  as  they  do  from  the  pen  of  ar  out- 
spoken local  critic: 

Unfortunately  government  as  an  art  is  not  understood  to 
include  or  embrace  hygiene.  Politics  concern  themselves  only 
with  the  passions  of  the  people,  and  the  detriment  thereof. 
The  oft-quoted  tag:  "the  health  (sic)  of  the  people  is  the 
supreme  law,"  is  remembered  only  when  an  orator  is  anxious 
to  display  his  erudition,  or  when  he  feels  in  a  particularly 
cynical  mood.  The  "  supreme  law,"  as  every  one  knows,  is 
to  get  what  you  can,  when  you  can,  how  you  can,  but  get  it ! 

Not  merely  in  the  Provinces  is  hygiene  neglected.  The  big 
cities  are  great  culprits  in  this  matter.  Some  years  ago  the 
city  of  Rosario  was  visited  by  bubonic  plague.  Instantly  it 
was  placed  in  a  state  of  siege.  Trains  from  outside  were  not 
allowed  to  enter,  nor  were  passengers  allowed  to  leave  without 
"  a  thorough  disinfection."  They  and  their  luggage  were  sub- 
mitted to  the  process,  which  gave  them  a  disagreeable  odour, 
but,  unfortunately,  gave  immunity  to  no  one.  The  outbreak 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  too  benevolent  to  cause  wide  alarm 
in  Rosario,  but  it  had  a  wonderful  influence  in  stimulating  the 
city  authorities.  As  if  by  some  enchantment,  the  old  foetid 
system  of  cesspools  in  the  centre  of  the  city  was  done  away 
with  and  modern  sanitation  installed.  Legions  of  homeless 
dogs  were  summarily  caught  and  mercifully  asphyxiated.  The 
vigorous  broom  of  reform  was  wielded  unceasingly  for  a  few 
months,  and  Rosario  smelled  sweeter  in  consequence.  But 
much  still  remains  to  be  done  in  Rosario.  In  Buenos  Ayres 
the  old  problem  of  sanitation  is  now  in  course  of  solution,  a 
comprehensive  and  stupendous  scheme  being  in  course  of  exe- 
cution. Still  there  are  places  in  the  outskirts  that  would  serve 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  173 

as  nurseries  for  exotic  disease-germs.  Unfortunately,  too,  the 
conventillos  are  full  of  children  and  adults  predisposed  by 
heredity,  by  malnutrition  and  unwholesome  surroundings,  to 
fall  victims  to,  and  propagate,  any  passing  epidemic.  .  .  . 

The  fact  is,  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  find  a  city, 
town  or  village  in  Argentina  that  can  boast  of  adequate  sani- 
tary arrangements.  The  smaller  the  place  the  greater  the 
problem.  But  to  listen  to  Argentine  orators,  in  Congress  or 
out  of  Congress,  it  might  be  thought  that  this  country  had 
absolutely  nothing  to  worry  about  but  the  unsatisfactory  politi- 
cal conditions  of  the  Provinces  and  the  country.  Whole  ses- 
sions are  devoted  to  a  sterile  debate  upon  the  alleged  covert 
intervention  of  the  National  authorities  in  the  mean  and  petti- 
fogging "  politics  "  of  the  Provinces»  But  never  a  word  about 
the  squalor  that  is  endemic  in  the  cities  and  towns  of  these 
politician-ridden,  quasi-autonomous  States.  Should  Nemesis 
come  along  she  will  exact  heavy  retribution  for  culpable  loss 
of  time  and  opportunity,  sacrificed  in  order  that  glib  orators 
may  air  their  ineffective  gifts. 

Clearly  social  hygiene  is  not  yet  a  strong  point  in 
the  Argentine,  where  62  per  cent,  of  deaths  among 
children  born  in  the  country  are  due  to  mal-nutrition 
and  errors  of  diet.  Think  of  the  folly  of  it!  A  land 
clamouring  for  population,  inviting  immigrants  of  all 
races,  yet  allowing  a  high  percentage  of  its  new-born 
citizens  to  perish  owing  to  the  lack  of  humanitarianism 
in  its  social  system.  The  life  of  the  individual  is 
valued  lightly  in  the  Argentine  and  in  any  sort  of  so- 
ciety where  the  welfare  of  the  component  atoms  is 
deemed  of  no  importance,  the  basis  upon  which  to  rear 
the  fabric  of  social  well-being  is  insecure. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  poor  stuff  out  of  which 
the  social  life  of  Buenos  Ayres  has  to  be  constructed, 


174  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

note  the  following,  which  I  reprint  from  the  Buenos 
Ayres  Standard: 

"  Those  who  live  in  glass  houses  should  pull  the  blinds 
down  "  is  an  old  axiom  worth  keeping  in  mind.  Although  not 
exactly  a  glass  house,  there  is  a  hotel  in  Calle  Cangallo.  A 
bedroom  in  the  ground  floor  has  two  large  windows  fronting 
the  street.  Last  night  both  these  windows  were  surrounded 
by  an  admiring  crowd.  An  Englishman  who  happened  to  pass 
naturally  stopped  to  look  at  the  attraction.  This  consisted  of 
a  young  and  exceedingly  pretty  woman  who  had  "  divested  " 
herself  and  got  into  bed,  quite  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  the 
persianas  (lattice  shutters)  were  wide  open.  The  evening  was 
warm,  and  as  she  slept  the  sleep  of  the  just,  she  exhibited  even 
more  of  the  human  form  divine  than  would  be  considered  dis- 
creet by  a  classical  dancer.  The  admiring  crowd  freely  criti- 
cised the  sleeping  beauty  and  made  no  attempt  whatever  to 
arouse  her  to  a  sense  of  her  position.  Our  English  friend 
promptly  entered  the  hotel,  explained  matters,  and  a  maid 
promptly  entering  the  room  switched  off  the  light,  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  a  chorus  of  groans  from  those  who  stood 
without. 

The  lax  organisation  of  the  police  is  largely  to 
blame  for  the  lack  of  social  sweetness  throughout  the 
Argentine.  The  officials  of  the  force  embrace  every 
type  of  mankind  from  honest  devoted  servants  of  the 
public  to  the  lowest  of  "  grafters  "  and  murderers. 
They  are  constantly  swaying  between  excess  of  zeal 
and  absolute  indifference,  or  active  participation  in 
criminality.  Here  is  a  typical  case  as  reported  in  the 
daily  press: 

The  Buenos  Ayres  iyth  police  have  been  accused  of  a  serious 
abuse  of  authority.  According  to  the  accusers,  a  young  couple 


SUMMER  SCENES  ON  THE  TIGRE,  THE  RIVER  RESORT  NEAR 
BUENOS  AYRES 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  175 

engaged  to  be  married  were  arrested  in  the  Plaza  Francia  be- 
cause they  were  seated  on  a  bench  talking.  Conveyed  to  the 
comisaria,  the  two  prisoners  were  confined  in  separate  rooms, 
and  one  of  the  two  police  officials,  it  is  alleged,  assaulted  the 
young  woman  in  a  most  cowardly  and  repulsive  manner.  The 
case  has  been  referred  to  the  Chief  of  Police. 

That  is  all  I  ever  heard  of  the  matter.  Almost  daily 
all  sorts  of  police  scandals  come  to  light  in  the  press, 
show  their  ugly  heads  for  a  moment,  as  it  were,  then 
slip  out  of  sight,  "  no  more  being  heard  of  the  mat- 
ter." 

A  similar  case  to  that  just  quoted  came  to  my  knowl- 
edge, in  which  two  Gringos  figured  unhappily.  A 
young  lady  arrived  from  England  to  marry  her 
sweetheart,  who  was  employed  in  Buenos  Ayres.  On 
the  second  night  of  her  arrival,  they  strolled  to  the 
Plaza  San  Martin,  and,  forgetful  of  the  strange  ameni- 
ties of  local  society,  behaved  in  the  "  spoony  "  fashion 
of  a  loving  cquple  in  a  London  park.  They  were 
promptly  arrested  and  passed  the  rest  of  the  night  in 
prison.  The  creature  who  would  arrest  them  might 
be  a  half-breed  Indian,  himself  capable  of  any  crime, 
but  not  understanding  that  Gringos  are  accustomed  to 
do  their  love-making  in  the  open! 

Quaintly  enough,  the  police  are  often  the  ravishers 
of  helpless  women.  Once  during  our  stay  a  young 
woman  was  forcibly  taken  by  two  men  in  a  taxicab  to 
the  woods  at  Palermo  and  there  criminally  assaulted 
by  them,  while  a  vigilante  "  kept  the  coast  clear."  The 
men  then  decamped,  and  the  zealous  agent  of  Argen- 
tine law  himself  committed  a  further  criminal  assault 
on  the  unfortunate  woman.  The  police  have  even 


176  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

been  known  —  though  this  predated  our  stay  in  the 
town  —  to  seize  a  woman  in  the  street,  conduct  her  to 
a  house  and  assault  her ! 

With  the  police  as  active  agents  in  wrong-doing,  the 
social  life  of  the  country  could  not  be  other  than  it  is. 
Nay,  when  one  has  listened  to  many  stories  of  official 
turpitude,  the  surprise  is  that  so  much  approximating 
to  modern  civilised  conditions  should  be  able  to  survive 
in  the  Argentine.  Although  probably  more  in  place  in 
my  chapter  on  the  Emigrants,  I  am  tempted  to  relate 
here,  for  the  lurid  light  it  throws  on  certain  sections  of 
Argentine  society,  one  of  several  stories  told  to  me 
by  an  Italian-doctor,  who  had  practised  for  some  twelve 
years,  first  in  a  provincial  town  and  afterwards  in  the 
Federal  capital. 

A  countryman  of  his  came  to  the  Argentine,  with  his 
young  wife  and  infant  daughter.  In  Italy  he  had  been 
a  small  market-gardener,  and  in  the  new  Land  of  Prom- 
ise he  started  in  a  humble  way  as  a  cultivator  of  pota- 
toes and  vegetables  near  a  country  town  some  thirty- 
five  miles  from  Buenos  Ayres.  Modest  prosperity  at- 
tended his  efforts,  and  in  their  rudely  built  and  sparely 
furnished  little  rancho,  the  couple  lived  happily  and 
contentedly  with  their  little  daughter.  Some  years  of 
increasing  prosperity  passed  in  this  way,  and  the  Ital- 
ian was  able  to  acquire  a  little  more  land.  Meanwhile, 
a  slight  friendship  had  sprung  up  between  him  and  the 
local  comisario,  who,  in  riding  past,  would  occasionally 
dismount  and  enter  the  rancho,  or  take  a  seat  in  the 
shade  of  the  rude  verandah,  to  share  a  bottle  of  wine 
with  the  Italian  and  his  wife.  Indeed,  the  story  as 
told  to  me  by  the  doctor,  with  the  warm,  imaginative 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  177 

touch  which  the  Italian  imports  from  his  native  tongue 
into  the  Spanish,  was  quite  idyllic  up  to  this  point,  but 
here  enters  the  element  of  tragedy. 

It  so  happened  that  the  young  wife,  her  husband's 
junior  by  some  eight  or  ten  years,  was  even  more  beau- 
tiful than  the  average  woman  of  her  class,  admittedly 
the  most  beautiful  of  peasant  women.  At  first  the 
Italian  was  flattered  by  the  friendship  of  the  police  of- 
ficer, whose  good-will  it  was  desirable  to  retain,  if  all 
sorts  of  oppressive  restrictions  hampering  the  develop- 
ment of  the  ranchero's  work  were  to  be  avoided  —  but 
later,  he  began  to  wonder  whether  this  friendship 
sprang  entirely  from  good  feeling  towards  himself,  or 
whether  the  comisario  was  casting  an  envious  eye  upon 
the  young  wife.  Suddenly  awakened  to  the  possibili- 
ties of  this,  and  being,  in  common  with  most  of  his  race, 
a  man  of  passionate  nature,  the  Italian  forthwith  de- 
termined to  remove  from  the  district  to  some  place 
where  he  hoped  his  wife  might  be  free  from  any  pos- 
sible persecution  and  he  from  being  tempted  to  the 
usual  extreme  of  the  Italian  husband  whose  honour  has 
been  assailed. 

Selling  his  plots  and  belongings  for  much  less  than 
he  might  have  secured  had  he  cared  to  wait  a  favour- 
able offer,  he  removed  some  forty  miles  away,  leaving 
no  clue  as  to  his  address.  In  this  new  locality  he  ac- 
quired a  similar  piece  of  land,  set  about  the  erection 
of  a  new  rancho  and  the  preparation  of  his  soil.  Here 
he  opined  his  wife  would  at  least  be  safe  from  the  at- 
tentions of  the  official,  and  he  determined  he  would 
exercise  greater  care  in  preventing  the  comisario  of  the 
new  district  from  setting  eyes  on  her,  for  he  had  now 


178  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

realised,  what  all  his  countrymen  in  the  Argentine  come 
speedily  to  understand,  that  a  good-looking  wife  is  one 
of  the  most  dangerous  possessions  an  emigrant  can  take 
with  him  to  the  new  land.  Quietly  the  couple  went 
about  their  business  for  a  time,  the  wife  actively  assist- 
ing in  the  work  of  the  little  farm.  The  shadow  of  the 
evil  comisario  seemed  to  have  passed.  But  it  was  not  so. 
Annoyed  at  being  baulked  of  his  prey,  that  ruffian  had 
carefully  followed  up  the  disappearance  of  the  Italian 
couple  and  traced  them  to  their  new  place  of  abode. 
This  he  managed  by  the  simple  process  of  sending  out 
an  official  description  to  all  the  surrounding  comisarias, 
describing  the  couple  and  asking  for  news  of  them  to 
be  forwarded  to  him,  as  though  they  were  fugitives 
from  justice !  And  so  it  happened  that,  after  a  few 
more  months  of  peaceful  industry,  the  Italian  was  hor- 
rified one  day  to  see  his  wife's  persecutor  riding  down 
the  main  street  of  the  town,  in  company  with  the  local 
chief  of  police.  Scenting  evil  afoot,  he  hastened  home 
to  warn  his  wife,  and  make  preparations  for  eventuali- 
ties. 

That  very  evening  the  comisario,  accompanied  by  a 
local  vigilante,  called  at  the  house  and  demanded  ad- 
mission, declaring  they  held  an  order  for  the  arrest  of 
the  Italian.  The  latter's  response  was  to  discharge  a 
revolver  point  blank  at  the  police  agent,  whom  he  griev- 
ously wounded, —  the  officer  keeping  out  of  range. 
The  latter  then  withdrew,  only  to  return  with  two  more 
agents,  and  several  roughs  from  a  neighbouring  cafe. 
Acting  on  his  instructions,  the  gang  attacked  the  house, 
the  two  vigilantes  being  killed  by  the  Italian  before  he 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  179 

was  overpowered  and  bound  to  the  rough  wooden  posts 
of  the  inner  wall.  The  comisario  and  the  scoundrels 
who  accompanied  him  now  criminally  assaulted  the 
young  wife  and  daughter  before  the  eyes  of  the  help- 
less man,  and  eventually  left,  carrying  away  with  them 
the  mother  and  child,  only  when  the  outraged  husband 
seemed  to  have  been  rendered  raving  mad. 

Later,  several  agents  were  sent  from  the  local 
comisaria  to  remove  the  now  almost  lifeless  Italian,  who 
had  been  seriously  injured  in  the  melee  and  crippled  for 
life  owing  to  the  wanton  brutality  of  those  who  broke 
into  his  rancho.  He  was  lodged  in  jail,  and  after 
many  months  was  tried  and  sentenced  to  some  five 
years'  imprisonment  for  the  shooting  of  the  two  agents 
sent  to  arrest  him.  Surviving  the  prison  ordeal,  he 
was  eventually  released,  though  crippled,  beggared, 
and  hopeless.  But  the  Italian  spirit  of  revenge  burned 
fiercely  within  his  shattered  frame,  and  obtaining  one 
of  the  deadly  stilettos  with  which  his  countrymen  are 
all  too  familiar,  within  a  few  months  of  regaining  his 
freedom,  he  succeeded,  in  the  most  dramatic  manner, 
in  killing  not  only  the  comisario  who  had  worked  such 
havoc  with  his  life,  but  also  the  brother  officer  who  had 
so  callously  aided  and  abetted  him.  The  one  he  de- 
spatched in  a  cafe;  the  other  in  his  private  room  at  the 
police  station,  allowing  himself  to  be  arrested  imme- 
diately thereafter.  Of  his  ultimate  fate  the  Italian 
doctor  could  not  speak,  but  he  assured  me  the  facts 
were  as  stated,  and  that  the  man  was  personally  known 
to  him.  Nor  did  he  know  what  sinister  fate  befell  the 
wife  and  daughter.  Such  is  one  of  the  little  tragedies 


i8o  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  the  Argentine,  and  one  that  I  have  been  assured  by 
those  who  know  is  typical  of  numberless  unwritten 
chapters  in  its  social  life. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  killing  of  the  officer  in 
a  restaurant  and  being  able  to  escape  to  a  distant  town 
and  kill  another,  seems  improbable;  but  this  you  will 
understand  when  you  know  what  happens  in  the  event 
of  a  public  murder  in  the  Argentine.  I  remember 
walking  along  Calle  Maipu,  in  Buenos  Ayres,  soon 
after  my  arrival,  when  suddenly  seven  or  eight  people 
bolted  out  of  a  small  cafe,  the  entrance  to  which  was 
down  some  steps,  and  whence  came  the  screams  of  a 
woman.  Presently  two  policemen  came  hurrying 
along  and  disappeared  within.  Everybody  near  the 
scene  took  care  to  avoid  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the 
cafe,  lest  he  might  be  arrested  as  a  witness !  What  had 
happened  was  this.  A  man  had  been  shot  dead,  and 
his  body  was  lying  in  the  cafe,  where  only  an  old  woman 
who  attended  the  bar  remained,  every  one  who  had 
been  in  the  place  at  the  time  of  the  murder  inconti- 
nently bolted.  And  well  for  them  that  they  did  so, 
as  it  is  the  custom  of  the  police  to  make  indiscriminate 
arrests  of  witnesses  in  the  neighbourhood  of  any  crime 
that  has  been  committed,  and  these  helpless  witnesses 
are  lodged  in  gaol  and  treated  with  greater  rigour  than 
the  perpetrator  of  the  deed!  So  notorious  is  this 
ludicrous  procedure,  that  there  is  a  saying  in  Buenos 
Ayres,  "  It  is  better  to  be  a  murderer  than  a  witness," 
and  consequently  an  enormous  number  of  crimes  pass 
unpunished  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  one  who  val- 
ues his  personal  safety  cares  to  come  forward  as  a  wit- 
ness. 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  181 

The  nature  of  the  crimes  perpetrated  daily  through- 
out Argentina  is  such  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  re- 
volts at  the  mere  thought  of  human  beings  existing  who 
could  be  guilty  of  such  enormities.  But  it  is  only  fair 
to  say  that  in  these  crimes  of  passion  and  violence,  the 
native  Argentine  is  seldom  involved,  the  lower  class 
Italian,  and  especially  the  Neapolitan,  being  the  worst 
offender.  Indeed  the  Italian  doctor  who  told  me  the 
story  related  above  was  careful  to  explain  that  neither 
of  the  comisarios  who  played  such  villainous  parts  were 
Argentines  of  pure  descent,  but  were  Spanish-Italians. 
One  has  only  to  note  the  names  of  the  persons  con- 
cerned in  the  cases  reported  in  the  Press  to  realise  that 
Italy,  and  especially  that  hotbed  of  vice  and_criminal- 
ity  of  which  Naples  is  the  centre,  is  responsible  for  the 
largest  percentage  of  the  inhuman  outrages  that  stain 
the  records  of  the  Argentine. 

As  I  have  hinted,  the  Gringo  who  gets  himself  in- 
volved in  any  sort  of  dispute  with  the  police  is  likely 
to  regret  it.  The  only  safe  course  is  to  avoid  at  all 
costs  the  intervention  of  the  legal  authorities.  When 
one  must  go  to  law,  then  care  must  be  taken  to  ensure 
the  proper  course  of  justice,  either  by  judicious  bribery 
or  personal  influence !  I  have  known  of  cases  in  the 
United  States  where  it  has  been  necessary  "  to  purchase 
justice,"  particularly  one  important  judgment  which 
was  only  placed  beyond  doubt  by  liberally  feeing  the 
judges.  Similarly,  the  honest  man  who  meekly  sits 
down,  and  out  of  his  unworldiness  allows  "  justice  "  to 
take  its  course  in  the  Argentine,  without  doing  some- 
thing to  help  it  along,  may  live  to  regret  his  scrupulous- 
ness. 


182  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

An  English  acquaintance  whose  sense  of  justice  is  so 
abnormally  developed  that  he  would  go  to  law  about 
the  most  trumpery  matter  rather  than  submit  to  what 
he  felt  to  be  an  injustice,  one  morning  had  to  make 
some  calls  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and,  hailing  a  coach  from 
the  rank  in  front  of  the  hotel,  he  drove  to  his  first  ap- 
pointment, a  matter  of  some  ten  minutes,  asking  the 
driver  —  an  Italian  —  to  wait  for  him  at  a  certain 
point  a  few  hundred  yards  distant,  where  coaches  were 
permitted  to  stand.  But  after  discharging  his  business 
and  going  to  the  place  in  question,  he  could  not  find  the 
coach.  The  driver  had  evidently  accepted  another 
fare,  hoping  to  get  back  in  time  for  my  friend.  But, 
behold  him  at  the  hotel  in  the  evening,  demanding  pay- 
ment of  fifteen  or  sixteen  pesos,  on  the  ground  that  he 
had  waited  several  hours  for  the  return  of  the  trav- 
eller, and  only  gave  up  hope  of  his  coming  back  when  it 
was  nearing  dinner  time  !  The  Englishman  declined  to 
disgorge  six  or  seven  dollars  for  his  ten  minutes'  coach 
drive,  and  offered  two  pesos,  exactly  double  the  amount 
he  had  legally  incurred  up  to  the  time  of  leaving  the 
coach,  and  thus  allowing  for  the  time  he  had  ordered 
the  coachman  to  wait.  This  the  man  indignantly  re- 
fused, quitting  the  hotel  with  vows  of  vengeance  on  the 
Englishman  who,  by  the  way,  had  only  a  smattering  of 
the  language,  or  sufficient  to  indicate  in  a  crude  and 
gesticulative  manner  what  he  required. 

Next  morning,  or  it  may  have  been  the  next  again, 
when  walking  along  the  Calle  Florida,  our  Gringo  was 
surprised  to  find  himself  stopped  by  a  policeman,  with 
whom  was  the  cochero,  and  reauested  to  accompany 


VIEWS  OF  MAR  DEL  PLATA. 

In  the  second  picture  the  large  building  of  "  El  Club,'  the  gambling  centre  during 
the  short  bathing  season,  is  seen,  and  the  bottom  illustration  shows  the  new  "  Rambla  " 
or  promenade  of  cement  structure  which  has  supplanted  a  rickety  wooden  one. 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  183 

them  to  the  comisaria.  He  gave  the  agente  to  under- 
stand, as  well  as  he  could  by  gesture  and  some  of  his 
odd  Spanish  words,  that  he  would  go  with  him  in  a 
coach,  but  would  not  be  taken  on  foot  through  the 
streets.  Eventually  this  was  agreed  to,  and  thus  they 
reached  the  police  station,  where  some  hours  passed 
before  the  magistrate  could  or  would  inquire  into  the 
case. 

In  vain  did  the  prisoner  claim  permission  to  com- 
municate with  the  British  Minister,  and  when  at  length 
he  was  brought  before  the  judge,  it  was  clear  that  gen- 
tleman had  made  up  his  mind  on  the  story  already  told 
by  the  cabman,  which  was  naturally  a  tissue  of  lies.  A 
request  for  an  interpreter  was  at  first  refused,  the 
magistrate  saying  he  believed  the  Gringo  understood 
well  enough  what  was  being  said  to  and  about  him,  but 
on  continued  protest,  an  interpreter  was  called,  and  he 
made  it  his  first  business  to  interpret  nothing  said  either 
by  the  magistrate  or  by  the  accused,  but  advised  the  lat- 
ter to  pay  up  and  get  out  of  the  court  at  once.  Mr. 
Gringo,  being  a  particularly  stiff-necked  British  type, 
insisted  that  having  incurred  the  trouble  of  being  ar- 
rested, he  would  not  now  pay  one  centavo  more  than 
he  had  offered  the  cochero  at  the  hotel,  and  demanded 
that  his  side  of  the  case  should  be  fully  interpreted  to 
the  magistrate.  Even  this  seemed  to  make  no  impres- 
sion on  the  enlightened  administrator  of  the  law,  who 
stated  that  the  simple  fact  remained  that  the  coachman 
had  been  engaged  and  had  not  been  discharged,  and 
that  evidently  the  accused  had  not  taken  sufficient  pains 
to  make  sure  that  the  coachman  was  not  waiting  for 


1 84  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

him  at  the  appointed  time  and  place,  the  prosecutor 
producing  a  lying  witness  who  swore  to  seeing  him  at 
the  appointed  place  and  at  the  time  stated. 

At  this  juncture  the  Englishman  again  in  the  most 
emphatic  way  instructed  the  interpreter  to  insist  on  hav- 
ing the  case  adjourned  until  he  could  have  time  to  com- 
municate with  the  British  Minister,  as  he  was  willing 
even  to  run  the  risk  of  a  night  in  jail  rather  than  ac- 
cede to  any  order  of  Court  that  seemed  to  him  un- 
just. His  request  was  again  dismissed  as  irrelevant, 
the  matter  being  one  entirely  for  the  consideration  of 
the  police  judge.  Then,  suddenly  recollecting  that  at 
the  moment  of  his  arrest  he  was  on  the  way  to  visit  a 
very  influential  Argentine  with  whom  he  had  business 
relations,  and  who  took  a  prominent  part  in  local  poli- 
tics, he  suggested  that  he  be  permitted  to  communicate 
with  this  gentleman.  When  the  judge  heard  the 
name  of  this  gentleman  pronounced,  and  realised 
he  might  be  a  friend  of  the  accused,  the  whole  com- 
plexion of  the  case  instantly  changed,  and  instead  of 
passing  judgment  for  the  payment  of  the  coachman's 
claim,  as  he  had  originally  shown  a  readiness  to  do, 
he  calmly  asked  the  accused  why  he  had  not  mentioned 
before  that  he  was  a  friend  of  Senor  Fulano  de  Tal, 
and  the  matter  could  have  been  arranged  immediately. 
Moreover,  he  would  not  even  allow  that  the  coachman 
was  entitled  to  more  than  one  peso,  his  minimum  fare 
for  the  ride  from  the  hotel  to  the  place  at  which  the 
Englishman  left  the  coach ! 

So  dumbfoundered  was  the  plaintiff  at  this  sudden 
change  of  front  that  he  burst  into  a  volley  of  oaths 
against  the  Gringo  and  also  insulted  the  judge,  who 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  185 

forthwith  clapped  him  into  jail  to  cool  off  for  the  next 
three  days ! 

Our  friend,  not  a  little  satisfied  with  the  turn  of 
events,  was  thereupon  liberated,  with  no  worse  loss 
than  that  of  some  four  or  five  hours'  time,  and  the  ex- 
penditure of  a  certain  amount  of  nervous  anxiety. 
But  that  was  not  the  end  of  the  matter.  The  cochero, 
having  spent  a  few  pesos  by  way  of  bribes  anticipatory, 
had  ample  time  in  the  next  three  days  to  nurse  his 
wrath  to  scalding  point,  and  the  Englishman  was  ad- 
vised, in  view  of  this,  to  be  very  careful  of  his  move- 
ments after  these  three  days  had  passed,  as  it  was  a 
matter  that  might  be  settled  in  the  approved  manner 
of  the  Italian  —  at  the  point  of  the  stiletto. 

It  so  happened  that  five  days  after  the  court  scene, 
the  Englishman  was  due  to  sail  for  England,  and  dur- 
ing the  days  following  the  prisoner's  release  he  prac- 
tically never  left  the  hotel,  even  taking  the  precaution 
of  having  his  luggage  conveyed  to  the  boat  by  another 
traveller,  to  throw  the  coachman  off  the  scent,  if  per- 
chance he  was  lurking  about,  seeking  vengeance.  Then 
when  ready  to  leave,  a  friend  engaged  a  taxicab  and 
drove  up  in  it  to  the  kitchen  entrance  of  the  hotel,  the 
Englishman  jumping  in  instantly.  Thus  he  succeeded 
in  eluding  the  ruffian,  but  he  actually  saw  him  arrive  at 
the  quayside  just  when  the  visitors  were  being  turned 
off  the  vessel. 

The  simple  narration  of  this  episode  can  give  but 
faint  idea  of  the  anxiety  and  inconvenience  it  must  have 
caused  to  the  English  traveller,  and  it  is  to  be  doubted 
whether  in  the  end  he  was  the  gainer.  My  own  policy 
was  invariably  to  submit  to  any  sort  of  injustice  when 


1 86  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

I  could  not  see  an  immediate  likelihood  of  successfully 
protesting  against  it.  The  line  of  least  resistance  is 
certainly  the  only  policy  in  the  Argentine  that  makes 
for  comfort  and  peace  of  mind. 

The  practice  of  indiscriminately  thrusting  people 
into  jail  and  leaving  them  there  for  several  days,  in 
the  vilest  conditions  and  often  in  a  common  room  with 
the  most  desperate  characters,  before  inquiring  into 
their  cases,  had  one  solitary  merit,  and,  as  the  Irishman 
said,  even  that  was  a  bad  one.  In  every  motor  acci- 
dent that  takes  place  —  and  there  are  many  daily  — 
the  first  thing  the  policeman  does  is  to  march  the 
chauffeur  off  to  jail,  and  have  the  car  removed  after- 
wards. It  is  a  matter  of  complete  indifference  to  the 
police  whether  the  accident  is  the  fault  of  the  chauffeur 
or  not  —  off  he  goes  to  jail  and  there  he  may  lie  for 
several  days  before  he  is  discharged.  As  it  would  be 
difficult  to  discover  more  reckless  drivers  than  those 
who  make  pandemonium  of  the  streets  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  this  struck  me  as  not  entirely  a  bad  method.  To 
assume  the  guilt  of  the  motor-driver  until  he  had 
proved  his  innocence  was,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  to 
take  the  proper  course.  Some  English  acquaintances 
of  mine,  however,  who  kept  an  automobile  and  em- 
ployed a  very  considerate  and  cool-headed  Englishman 
as  driver,  were  unable  to  agree  with  me,  as  their  man 
had  just  spent  three  days  in  jail  for  a  slight  accident, 
in  which  a  careless  passenger  had  injured  his  foot  by 
stepping  off  the  pavement  against  the  wheel  of  the  car, 
and  owing  to  the  verminous  condition  of  the  jail,  the 
poor  chauffeur  had  to  destroy  all  his  clothes  after  he 
was  liberated!  My  friends  also  had  to  suffer  in- 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  187 

convenience  owing  to  their  car  being  abandoned  in  the 
street  by  the  arrest  of  the  driver,  and  being  held  by  the 
police  for  a  day  or  two  before  it  was  delivered  to 
them,  sustaining  in  the  meantime  some  damage.  The 
only  moral  of  this  story  is  that  Buenos  Ayres  is  no 
place  for  an  English  chauffeur ! 

But  of  course  it  is  easy  to  be  critical  of  the  social 
conditions  of  a  country  which,  after  all,  has  no  more 
than  emerged  from  somewhat  primitive  conditions  into 
the  larger  life  of  a  great  modern  nation.  The  Span- 
ish civilisation  in  America  was  not  in  every  way  su- 
perior to  the  native  civilisations  it  destroyed  and  sup- 
planted, and  for  generations  it  made  but  little  progress 
of  itself,  if  anything  deteriorating  as  the  inevitable 
consequence  of  its  low  and  brutalising  aim  —  the 
securing  of  treasure  for  the  Spanish  Crown,.  The 
Spanish  communities  established  throughout  the  con- 
tinent were  notoriously  lacking  in  ideals.  Until 
they  threw  off  the  yoke  of  Spain  and  began  to  feel 
within  themselves  the  stirring  of  national  aspirations, 
to  cherish  ambitions  of  elevating  themselves  into  indi- 
vidual nations,  their  history  went  some  way  to  justify 
the  famous  cynicism  that  the  true  dividing  line  between 
Africa  and  Europe  are  not  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar,  but 
the  Pyrenees. 

No  longer,  however,  can  it  be  said  that  any  of  these 
virile  young  peoples  are  without  their  ideals.  If  the 
Argentine  citizen  had  no  other  figure  than  the  splendid 
one  of  Sarmiento  to  point  to,  he  would  still  be  justified 
in  claiming  for  his  country  a  place  among  the  intel- 
lectual nations  of  our  time.  And  Sarmiento  is  but  one 
of  many  great  men  whom  the  Argentine  has  produced. 


1 88  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

There  is  everywhere  in  South  America  to-day  an 
unmistakable  reaching  out  for  better  things.  Along- 
side the  sheer  brutality,  unhappily  still  existing,  the 
tender  plant  of  intellectual  culture  has  been  growing, 
and  with  it  true  humanitarianism  must  make  progress. 
It  is,  however,  the  defect  of  virtue  ever  to  be  less  in- 
teresting than  vice ;  not  only  in  the  Argentine,  but  also 
among  ourselves,  the  baser  elements  of  society  have  a 
knack  of  thrusting  themselves  in  front  of  the  worthier, 
so  that  the  observer  is  liable  to  get  his  perspective 
askew.  That  is  why  it  is  easy  to  overestimate  the  im- 
portance of  these  baser  elements  of  Argentine  social 
life,  though  not  to  overdraw  the  picture  of  actual  con- 
ditions. It  may  fairly  be  said  that  the  baser  ele- 
ments of  social  life  touch  a  higher  percentage  of  the 
whole  in  the  Latin-American  civilisation  of  to-day 
than  in  that  of  Europe  or  North  America,  but  that  the 
more  elevating  factors  are  present  and,  if  less  in  de- 
gree, are  similar  in  kind  to  those  of  the  older  nations, 
and  will  eventually  produce  a  worthy  social  system,  in 
which  intellectualism  and  humanitarianism  will  tri- 
umph over  the  brute  forces  of  self-seeking  and  indif- 
ferentism.  But  the  time  is  not  yet. 

The  Argentine  is  credited  with  expending  more  on 
the  education  of  its  people  than  any  other  country  in 
the  world,  with  the  exception  of  Australia,  and  if  the 
truth  must  be  told,  it  is  not  getting  the  best  value  for 
its  expenditure.  Since  the  days  when  Sarmiento, — 
who  took  part  in  the  insurrection  against  the  notorious 
Rosas  in  1829,  and  some  twenty  years  later  had  a  hand 
in  overthrowing  that  gaucho  tyrant, —  established  in 
1856,  the  first  department  of  public  education,  the  pub- 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  189 

lie  schools  of  the  Argentine  have  been  regarded  as  one 
of  the  first  considerations  of  every  statesman.  Sar- 
miento  spent  his  life  in  the  cause  of  education,  which 
he  had  studied  in  the  United  States  and  in  Europe  be- 
fore rising  to  power  in  his  native  land,  and  during  his 
presidency  he  achieved  great  things  in  the  founding  of 
schools  and  colleges  throughout  the  country. 

A  visitor  to  Buenos  Ayres,  and  especially  if  he  be 
one  of  official  distinction  in  his  own  country,  will  be 
shown  some  most  admirable  educational  institutions  ini 
the  federal  capital,  and  among  these  the  splendid 
Colegio  Sarmiento,  which  perpetuates  the  memory  of 
the  wisest  and  most  humane  of  Argentine  presidents. 
So  far  good,  but  he  will  not  be  told,  especially  if  he 
be  under  official  guidance,  that  probably  the  school 
teachers  throughout  the  country  are  four,  five,  or  six 
months  in  arrears  with  their  salaries,  the  appropria- 
tion for  public  education  having  somehow  fallen  short 
of  the  requirements.  Just  as  an  immense  amount  of 
the  corruption  and  criminality  among  the  police  is 
due  directly  to  the  infamously  low  rate  of  re- 
muneration, which  in  1912  was  practically  the  same 
as  it  had  been  some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  before, 
though  the  cost  of  living  had  meanwhile  doubled,  if 
not  trebled,  so  is  school-teaching  rendered  one  of  the 
most  despicable  of  callings  by  reason  of  the  shame- 
fully low  wages  paid  to  those  engaged  in  it.  In  a 
country  where  the  commonest  forms  of  manual  labour 
are  highly  rewarded,  the  rank  and  file  of  teachers  are 
not  so  well  paid  as  they  are  in  the  United  States  or 
in  England,  and  thus,  in  financial  standing,  fall  into 
the  meanest  class  of  workers.  Nay,  it  is  by  no  means 


190  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

unusual  for  their  wretched  salaries  to  be  as  much  as 
six  months  in  arrears,  and  in  any  case  the  average 
teacher  seldom  has  the  satisfaction  of  handling  his  or 
her  income,  owing  to  a  check  system  worked  under  the 
immediate  auspices  of  the  Educational  Department  it- 
self. 

The  school  teacher,  being  quite  without  resources 
and  living  from  hand  to  mouth,  wishes  to  buy,  let  us 
say,  a  sewing  machine  for  his  wife,  or  some  household 
necessity.  He  obtains  this  on  the  instalment  system, 
and  the  Educational  Department  becomes  his  fiador, 
or  guarantor,  for  the  transaction.  It  does  more;  it 
actually  pays  the  instalments  and  marks  them  off 
against  his  salary !  In  such  wise  many  teachers  do  all 
their  shopping,  even  to  the  purchase  of  their  eatables, 
and  rarely  have  the  satisfaction  of  handling  their  ac- 
tual salaries.  No  wonder  that  the  poor  pedagogue, 
who  ought  to  be  the  hope  of  his  country,  is  more  often 
despised  and  contemned  for  his  inability  to  acquire 
money  in  a  country  where  the  possession  of  it  is  the 
sole  measure  of  a  man's  ability. 

Nevertheless,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  a 
genuine  desire  for  knowledge  among  the  Argentine 
people  to-day,  a  willingness  to  be  instructed,  only  sec- 
ond to  that  of  the  North  American,  whose  advanced 
ideals  of  education  first  fired  Sarmiento  to  emulation. 
The  works  of  an  informative  character  sold  in  the 
bookshops  would,  I  am  confident,  greatly  outnumber 
those  of  light  reading,  were  statistics  available.  There 
is-  throughout  the  Press  the  same  evidence  of  a  serious 
interest  in  subjects  which  in  England  would  be  consid- 
ered "  heavy  "  or  "  dull."  In  a  word,  the  good  Ar- 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  191 

gentine  is  a  man  very  much  in  earnest,  given  to  pon- 
dering the  problems  of  life  in  the  light  of  the  best 
criticism  he  can  find,  and  if  he  is  still  overshadowed 
by  his  worser  compatriots,  he  is  by  no  means  a  negli- 
gible quantity,  nor  is  he  rarely  to  be  met  with. 

In  many  ways  the  country  seems  to  be  passing 
through  much  the  same  social  development  as  the  his- 
tory of  the  United  States  presents,  always  remember- 
ing, however,  that  it  is  based  on  a  civilisation  that  dif- 
fers radically  from  the  Anglo-Saxon.  A  further 
evidence  of  this  is  the  extraordinary  popularity  of  the 
lecture  as  an  instrument  of  education*  In  the  course 
of  a  single  year,  the  procession  of  lecturers  who  invade 
Buenos  Ayres  assumes  proportions  that  are  almost 
comic.  Not  a  week  passes  but  the  newspapers  herald 
the  coming  of  some  European  celebrity,  whose  por- 
trait is  published  broadcast,  whose  life  is  written  up 
in  every  journal,  and  whose  lectures  (for  which  a  high 
fee  is  usually  charged)  are  pretty  sure  to  be  well  at- 
tended. The  subjects  on  which  these  lecturers  dis- 
course are  often  of  the  most  forbidding  seriousness, 
and  only  people  famishing  for  knowledge,  or  utterly 
at  a  loss  otherwise  to  dispose  of  their  time,  could  pro- 
vide audiences  for  them.  These  confer encistas  come 
indiscriminately  from  France,  Spain,  and  Italy,  the 
languages  of  these  countries  being  so  widely  repre- 
sented in  the  Argentine  that  a  gathering  capable  of 
understanding  any  or  all  of  them  is  not  difficult  to  get 
together.  Some  of  the  lecturers  are  officially  invited 
by  the  Government,  who  pay  their  fees  and  expenses, 
others  —  the  majority — are  quite  as  much  interested 
in  filling  their  pockets  as  in  furthering  the  intellectual 


192  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

development  of  the  Argentine,  and  very  willingly  in- 
vite themselves,  any  lecturer  of  the  Latin  race  being 
a  gifted  self-advertiser.  A  good  many  ladies,  chiefly 
Spanish  novelists  of  reputation  or  political  agitators, 
also  grace  the  lecture  platform  in  Buenos  Ayres  and 
the  large  provincial  centres.  A  reception  committee 
is  usually  formed  to  meet  the  distinguished  visitor  at 
the  boat,  and  there  is  the  usual  banquete,  with  the 
equally  inevitable  copa  de  champana,  and  the  ubiqui- 
tous photographers  from  Caras  y  Caretas  and  the 
other  pictorial  papers. 

This  movement  has  assumed  proportions  which  in 
1912  led  the  caricaturists  to  turn  their  attention  to  it, 
and  cartoons  of  the  different  lecturers  hurrying  off 
with  bags  of  gold,  indicated  the  local  cynicism  on  the 
subject;  but  apart  from  its  amusing  aspect  it  ought  to 
be  accepted  as  an  earnest  of  the  desire  that  does  exist 
for  instruction  in  subjects  of  public  life.  One  popular 
lecture,  for  instance,  was  devoted  to  "  The  Manage- 
ment of  Public  Museums,"  but  literary  subjects, 
studies  of  the  lives  of  famous  authors,  and  historical 
studies,  as  well  as  travel-talks,  seem  to  be  most  accept- 
able. One  lady  arrived  from  Spain  with  a  lecture  in 
which  she  endeavoured  to  prove  that  Columbus  was 
a  Spaniard,  based  upon  the  most  slender  evidence  put 
forth  by  a  Spanish  antiquary,  with  whom  the  wish  was 
father  to  the  thought;  but  she  was  listened  to  in  a 
good-humoured,  sceptical  manner,  which  spoke  well 
for  the  common-sense  of  the  people,  who  wisely  do 
not  care  a  straw  whether  Columbus  was  a  Gallego  or 
Genoese.  Among  the  celebrities  engaged  under  Gov- 
ernment auspices  to  lecture  in  recent  years  was  a  very 


SOME  PHASES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  193 

famous  French  novelist,  who  is  one  of  the  favourite 
authors  throughout  Latin  America.  In  common  with 
most  other  authors,  he  not  only  lectured,  but  made  use 
of  his  experience  on  returning  home  to  describe  the 
countries  he  had  visited.  His  description  of  Uruguay 
is  particularly  remembered  in  Montevideo,  as  he  is 
said  to  have  mentioned  the  fine  coffee  plantations  of 
that  country,  and  this  was  the  first  that  any  Uruguayan 
had  ever  heard  of  them ! 

Although  the  final  civilisation  of  the  Argentine  peo- 
ple will  leave  between  it  and  any  Anglo-Saxon  civilisa- 
tion a  marked  cleavage,  yet  it  will  approximate  more 
closely  to  the  British  or  North  American  than  to  the 
French  or  Spanish.  To  say  that  the  Argentines  are 
Latins  with  certain  aspirations  which  are  essentially 
characteristic  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  would  be  too  broad 
a  generalisation,  but,  closely  analysed,  we  can  discover 
even  more  characteristics  in  the  Argentine  sympathetic 
to  British  social  notions, —  imitative  of  them,  perhaps, 
—  than  in  the  French  or  Spanish,  though  at  bottom, 
the  Argentine  remains  Latin,  and  every  nation,  like 
every  individual,  is  doomed  to  carry,  wherever  it  goes 
along  the  road  of  progress  or  retrogression,  "  the  bag- 
gage of  its  own  psychology."  Socially,  the  British 
have  passed  through  some  of  the  phases  from  which 
the  Argentine  is  only  just  emerging,  and  North  Amer- 
icans have  passed  through  others  which  at  no  time  af- 
fected British  social  life. 

In  concluding  this  chapter,  I  have  to  admit  that  I 
have  been  somewhat  hampered  in  its  construction  by 
the  fact  that  many  illustrations  which  I  have  stored  in 
my  mind  affecting  the  social  side  of  things,  fall  more 


194  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

properly  into  other  sections  of  my  book,  so  that  it  is 
impossible  to  avoid  in  some  degree  the  overlapping  of 
interests,  especially  when  I  deal  with  subjects  such  as 
that  in  my  succeeding  chapter,  which  is  really  a  further 
consideration  of  the  social  life  of  the  country.  In  the 
present  chapter,  I  have  therefore  sought  to  do  no 
more  than  touch  discursively  upon  certain  incidents 
and  matters  coming  within  my  knowledge  during  my 
stay  on  the  River  Plate,  which  may  shed  some  light 
on  an  aspect  of  the  Argentine  which  few  American  or 
English  writers  mention  in  their  usually  flattering  and 
too  often  uncritical  studies  of  the  country  and  its  peo- 
pie. 


CHAPTER  XII 

BUSINESS    LIFE    IN   BUENOS   AYRES 

ALTHOUGH  I  will  not  admit  that  Buenos  Ayres  is  the 
most  desirable  place  of  residence,  or  that  I  should  will- 
ingly pass  any  considerable  portion  of  my  life  there, 
I  can  appreciate  its  fascination  for  the  man  of  busi- 
ness. I  was  continually  meeting  Britishers  who 
would,  in  the  crudest  fashion,  contrast  the  Argentine 
capital  with  the  cities  of  their  Homeland,  to  the  total 
eclipse  of  the  latter,  proclaiming  that  there  was  but 
one  place  on  earth  for  them,  and  that  was  Buenos 
Ayres.  But  I  never  met  an  American  there  who  pre- 
ferred it  to  any  of  the  great  cities  of  his  own  country. 
These  British  exiles  who  so  rejoice  in  their  expatria- 
tion are  undoubtedly  maintaining  in  their  adopted  city 
an  existence  that  in  all  points  of  comfort  cannot  be 
compared  with  that  within  the  reach  of  a  person  of 
very  moderate  means  at  home.  Yet  they  are  by  no 
means  to  be  regarded  as  asserting  loudly  what  they^ 
only  half-believe.  It  is  more  than  probable  that  they 
are  honestly  convinced  of  what  they  say,  and  that,  so 
far  as  they  are  concerned,  they  do  but  utter  the  simple' 
truth. 

The  secret  of  the  matter  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  the 
Argentine,  as,  indeed,  in  most  alert  young  countries, 
there  is  a  quick  response  to  the  efforts  of  the  business 
man,  which  is  but  rarely  experienced  in  the  markets  of 
the  Old  World.  In  this  progressive  Republic  we  have 

195 


ig6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  phenomenon  of  some  seven  million  people,  of 
whom  more  than  twenty  per  cent,  are  accessible  in  one 
city,  crying  out  for  commodities.  It  is  a  country  al- 
most destitute  of  industrial  resources,  lacking  coal, 
minerals,  wood,  the  essential  elements  of  industrial 
life,  for  though  minerals  and  wood  do  exist  within  the 
political  delimitations  of  the  Republic,  they  are  geo- 
graphically distant  from  the  centres  of  population. 
Imported  coal  is  extremely  costly,  while  water  power, 
owing  to  the  extraordinary  flatness  of  the  land  and  the 
sluggishness  of  its  rivers,  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible 
to  utilise.  So  that,  for  all  practical  purposes, —  unless 
the  discovery  of  oil  deposits  in  the  southwest  may 
work  a  revolution  in  industrial  possibilities, —  we  may 
regard  the  Argentine  as  a  country  at  present  limited  to 
the  pursuits  of  agriculture  and  cattle-rearing.  These 
are  the  true  bases  of  its  wealth;  for  the  development 
of  these  have  English  capitalists  poured  some  £150,- 
000,000  of  money  into  the  country,  to  cover  it  with  a 
system  of  admirably  constructed  and  well-managed 
railways.  Mainly  on  the  strength  of  these  industries, 
have  British,  French,  and  other  foreign  investors 
taken  up  the  millions  of  Government  Stock  for  the  na- 
tional development  of  the  Republic.  In  all  some 
£300,000,000  of  British  money  have  been  invested  in 
the  country. 

Thus  we  may  view  the  people  as  divided  into  two 
great  camps :  those  who  work  the  land  and  breed  cat- 
tle, and  those  who  make  a  living  (and  something  to 
spare)  by  supplying  the  requirements  of  the  former 
class,  acting  as  middlemen  between  the  European  or 
North  American  exporter  and  the  Argentine  con- 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         197 

sumer.  Roughly  into  one  or  other  of  these  very  dis- 
proportionate classes  every  worker  in  the  Argentine 
must  come,  although,  of  course,  there  are  endless  va- 
riations of  relativeness,  if  one  cares  to  search  for 
them.  It  is  true  that  here  and  there  some  slight  in- 
dustrial progress  falls  to  be  noted.  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  tobacco  making;  there  is  more  than  one  suc- 
cessful paper-making  enterprise;  in  a  timid  way  there 
is  even  the  founding  of  iron;  but  broadly  speaking, 
industries,  apart  from  the  land,  do  not  exist.  It  is 
true  you  can  get  a  table  made,  but  it  will  be  a  very  in- 
secure table,  it  will  also  be  very  expensive,  and  you  will 
be  sorry  you  did  not  buy  an  imported  one.  The  same 
applies  to  many  other  simple  kinds  of  manufactured 
articles,  which  might,  with  a  little  patience  and  care, 
be  successfully  and  profitably  produced  in  the  Argen- 
tine; but  it  is  a  safe  assumption  that  for  many  years  to 
come, —  probably  not  within  the  lifetime  of  the  pres- 
ent generation  —  there  is  no  likelihood  of  national  in- 
dustry developing  to  such  an  extent  that  it  would  be 
able  to  replace  in  any  great  measure  the  imported  arti- 
cle. 

Meanwhile,  the  commission  agent  is  enjoying  a 
golden  age  of  gain.  It  is  a  fairly  easy  matter  to  in- 
duce people  to  purchase  who  are  in  a  chronic  state  of 
needing  all  sorts  of  commodities,  living,  as  they  do, 
in  a  country  which  is  but  poorly  supplied  even  with 
the  commonest  necessities  of  modern  domestic  life. 
The  commission  agent  has  merely  to  announce  the  fact 
that  he  has  made  arrangements  with  Messrs.  So  &  So, 
the  well-known  manufacturers  of  this  or  that,  and  will 
be  pleased  to  supply  it  on  certain  terms,  for  his  cus- 


198  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tomers  to  find  him  out  and  make  him  busy, —  granted 
that  the  article  in  question  is  one  for  which  there  is  a 
real  need.  The  crudest  sort  of  advertising,  the  bald- 
est form  of  announcement,  will  prove  almost  as  effec- 
tive as  the  most  skilful  propaganda  would  at  home. 

So  it  happens  you  will  find  many  British  residents 
of  the  meagrest  intellectual  endowments  who  have 
acquired  considerable  fortunes  by  doing  nothing  more 
brilliant  than  I  have  indicated,  but  who  have  been 
lucky  enough  —  or  shrewd  enough,  if  you  will  —  to 
secure  the  representation  of  some  useful  British  or 
American-made  device,  such  as  a  wind-mill  water- 
pump,  of  which  many  thousands  are  in  use  throughout 
the  country;  a  mechanical  cash  register,  without  which 
no  Argentine  business  establishment  is  complete ;  a  pa- 
tent grass  cutter;  or  almost  any  conceivable  article  of 
general  utility.  While  the  primal  wealth  of  the 
country  may  come,  as  it  does  the  world  over, 
from  the  land,  the  most  substantial  profits  made 
are  those  that  go  into  the  pockets  of  the  agents,  many 
of  them  unskilled,  who  handle  the  imported  manufac- 
tured goods  which  the  people  of  the  country  require  in 
exchange  for  their  grain,  their  cattle,  their  cow-hides, 
and  their  wool.  Economically,  of  course,  this  is  an 
unfortunate  state  of  things,  but  I  am  concerned  not 
with  things  as  they  ought  to  be,  but  as  they  are,  and 
this  is  the  present  condition  of  the  Argentine. 

The  net  result  of  all  this  is  a  very  pronounced  feel- 
ing of  briskness  in  almost  every  branch  of  commerce. 
The  country  is  steadily  progressing  in  its  agricultural 
development,  the  Government  is  steadily  borrowing 
to  advance  public  works,  and,  except  for  the  tempo- 


C         ••«-•*'•        L  1- 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         199 

rary  set-back  in  1913,  it  may  be  said  that  credit  all 
round  has  continued  extremely  good  for  many  years. 
Consequently,  men  of  business  do  not  haggle  and  dis- 
cuss the  fractional  profits  with  which  manufacturers 
and  merchants  have  now-a-days  to  be  content  in  the 
older  countries  of  the  world,  and  especially  when  there 
is  a  large  amount  of  borrowed  capital  floating  through- 
out a  country,  there  is  sure  to  exist  something  of  that 
spendthrift  feeling  which  we  always  associate  with  the 
individual  borrower.  This  tends  to  make  commercial 
conditions  extremely  "  easy."  Given  that  A  possesses 
the  article  which  B  wants,  or  thinks  he  wants,  or  which 
perhaps  A  has  told  him  he  ought  to  have,  there  is 
every  likelihood  that  B  will  purchase  the  same  at  A's 
price,  or,  if  he  insists  on  a  reduction,  that  will  probably 
be  the  result  of  a  personal  knowledge  of  A,  who  is 
most  likely  in  the  habit  of  placing  a  specially  high 
profit  on  any  article  he  offers  to  B,  intending  to  rebate 
the  excess  of  profit.  This  used  to  be  the  sole  method 
of  doing  business  throughout  the  Latin-American 
market,  and  here  and  there  lingering  traces  of  the 
Moorish  system  of  asking  double  or  treble  what  one 
expects  to  receive  for  an  article,  may  be  detected. 

Until  quite  recently,  much  of  the  shopping  in  Buenos 
Ayres  was  conducted  on  this  ancient  Oriental  system 
of  beating  down  the  seller.  No  Argentine  lady  would 
ever  have  dreamed  of  paying  what  the  shopkeeper 
asked  her,  and,  equally,  no  shopkeeper  would  ever 
have  dreamed  of  asking  the  customer  what  he  expected 
eventually  to  accept;  but  the  Argentines,  more  alert 
than  most  Latin-Americans,  and  more  anxious  to  put 
themselves  in  line  with  Anglo-Saxon  business  meth- 


200  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ods,  have  largely  abandoned  this  obsolete  farce,  and 
now  in  most  business  houses  and  in  most  of  the  shops, 
preclo  fijo  is  the  order  of  the  day.  The  thanks  of  the 
shopkeeping  community  are  particularly  due  to  the 
pioneer  house  of  Messrs.  Gath  &  Chaves,  the  largest 
department  stores  in  the  Southern  continent,  who  vir- 
tually broke  down  the  old  system  when  they  opened 
their  great  establishments  some  years  ago  and  an- 
nounced that  all  goods  would  be  sold  at  fixed  prices. 
At  first  they  had  to  turn  away  innumerable  customers, 
who  simply  refused  to  buy  unless  the  prices  were  re- 
duced, but  eventually  the  battle  was  won  for  honest 
trading,  and  the  system  has  been  largely  adopted 
throughout  the  country.  It  is  true  that  small  dealers 
of  divers  sorts  still  endeavour  to  maintain  the  ancient 
bluff.  One  day,  for  instance,  in  the  window  of  a  bric- 
a-brac  seller,  I  was  attracted  by  a  walking-stick  of  a 
peculiar  Brazilian  wood.  I  entered,  and  asked  him 
how  much  he  wanted  for  it.  He  named  a  price,  the 
equivalent  of  about  $18. 

"  I'll  give  you  twelve  pesos  ($5),"  I  said. 

"  Muy  bien  " —  (very  well),  said  the  dealer,  wear- 
ily, as  he  handed  me  the  article  and  accepted  the 
money;  and  there  seemed  to  be  no  feeling  of  shame  on 
the  part  of  the  seller  at  endeavouring  to  secure  so  high 
a  price.  Assuredly,  what  I  paid  him  was  all  the  arti- 
cle was  worth,  and  probably  a  little  more  than  its  real 
value,  but,  assuming  that  I  wanted  the  stick,  he  made 
a  shot  at  a  price  which  he  fancied  I  might  pay. 

This  irresponsibility  is  characteristic  of  much  of  the 
business  dealings  not  only  in  Buenos  Ayres,  but  in  all 
the  South  American  centres  where  it  has  been  my  lot 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         201 

to  make  purchases.  There  is  an  extraordinary  igno- 
rance of  intrinsic  values.  The  restricting  of  imports, 
the  delays  of  the  Customs  authorities  (who  will  often 
hold  up  a  valuable  shipment  from  three  to  six  weeks 
after  its  arrival),  the  lack  of  competition,  all  tend  to 
the  imposition  of  the  most  absurd  prices.  Just  im- 
agine asking  three  printers  in  New  York  to  estimate 
for  a  certain  piece  of  work,  and  receiving  from  A  a 
quotation  for  $1000,  from  B  one  for  $457,  and  from  C 
another  of  $1825.  Such  disparities  are  absolutely 
unthinkable  in  any  country  where  labour  has  been 
properly  organised,  where  prices  of  materials  have 
been  more  or  less  standardised,  and  where  the  only 
difference  must  come  from  the  ability  of  one  firm  to 
save  a  little  more  than  its  competitors  in  its  working 
methods.  Not  once,  but  on  scores  of  occasions,  I  ex- 
perienced discrepancies  in  estimates  of  which  the  above 
illustration  is  typical.  Hence  the  man  of  business 
who  merely  employs  one  printer,  without  putting  oth- 
ers in  competition,  may  be  losing  heavily,  as  it  is  folly 
to  place  any  sort  of  order  without  securing  two  or 
three  checking  estimates.  Moreover, —  and  here  the 
foolishness  of  the  methods  adopted  becomes  apparent, 
- 1  have  on  more  than  one  occasion  invited  the 
printer  whose  estimate  was  highest  by  upwards  of 
$500,  but  whose  work  seemed  to  me  the  best,  to  accept 
the  order  at  the  estimate  of  the  lowest  printer,  and  he 
has  willingly  done  so !  I  also  recall  another  printer 
who,  on  my  protesting  against  an  overcharge  on  an 
account  for  $750,  made  a  reduction  of  $425,  in  order 
that  I  should  not  bar  him  from  future  work!  This 
slight  excess  occurred  on  some  work  done  without  es- 


202  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

timate.  The  same  printer  informed  me  that  the  ac- 
count in  question  was  based  on  the  standard  rate,  which 
for  many  years  his  house  had  been  charging  one  of  the 
principal  banks  for  the  printing  of  their  stationery. 
The  reader  will  scarcely  wonder,  therefore,  that  we 
used  to  remark,  in  discussing  these  discrepancies  in 
estimates,  that  it  was  evidently  no  more  than  a  toss-up 
whether  you  were  to  be  asked  to  pay  $50  or  $450, 
and  in  view  of  this  it  will  be  seen  how  essential  is  some 
expert  knowledge  of  the  work  in  hand  to  any  person 
who  ventures  to  engage  in  business  in  South  America. 
At  the  same  time,  the  spacious  feeling  which  comes 
from  this  disregard  of  small  profits  has  its  effect  on 
the  individual  man  of  business,  and  the  quick  results 
which  follow  the  friendly  attitude  of  the  public  to  all 
sorts  of  new  offers  is  highly  inspiriting.  I  can  there- 
fore perfectly  understand  the  enthusiasm  of  an  Eng- 
lishman who,  perhaps  only  moderately  successful,  or 
making  insufficient  progress  at  home,  has  emigrated  to 
Buenos  Ayres,  and  is  enjoying  the  delights  of  handling 
a  rapidly  growing  and  remunerative  business,  feeling 
that  here  indeed  is  the  only  land  worth  living  in.  For, 
after  all,  to  most  business  men  their  business  is  their 
life,  and  as  there  is  so  little  to  interest  any  man  in 
Buenos  Ayres  outside  of  his  office,  conditions  are 
mutually  reactive,  the  inspiration  of  the  business  serv- 
ing to  increase  one's  interest  in  one's  work,  and  the 
increased  interest  tending  to  increased  business.  In 
this  way  the  business  man  becomes  doubly  a  worker, 
and  knows  not  even  the  Saturday  afternoon  holiday, 
an  English  institution  that  is  very  slowly,  if  at  all, 
creeping  into  even  the  English  offices  in  Buenos  Ayres. 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         203 

Most  business  men  have  admitted  to  me  that,  while 
they  like  the  place,  it  is  only  a  place  for  working  and 
sleeping  in,  and  I  suspect  the  majority  of  cherishing  in 
their  heart  of  hearts  the  hope  of  returning  to  their 
native  land  some  day  for  good.  I  have  known  men 
who  have  lived  there  over  thirty  years,  and  who  have 
lost  every  relative  and  friend  they  ever  possessed  at 
home,  go  back  after  all  and  close  their  account  with 
Buenos  Ayres.  On  the  other  hand,  not  a  few  I  have 
met  who,  having  retired  to  England,  to  France,  or  to 
Germany,  as  the  case  may  have  been,  have  eventually 
returned  to  settle  and  die  in  Buenos  Ayres.  These 
are  the  people  who  say  there  is  "  a  something  "  that 
draws  them  back.  They  would  even  have  you  believe 
there  is  about  South  America  that  strange,  intangible 
glamour  of  the  East,  which  brings  most  who  have 
lived  in  the  Orient  under  its  spell.  This  I  will  not 
believe;  there  is  no  glamour,  there  is  no  romantic 
beauty,  there  is  no  sensuous  delight  in  the  atmosphere 
of  all  South  America.  What  happens  is  a  far  other 
thing.  Men  become  so  devoted  to  their  business,  un- 
der the  conditions  I  have  outlined,  so  engrossed  in  the 
mere  circumstance  of  their  prosperous  affairs,  that, 
neglecting  all  other  interests  in  life,  they  have  nothing 
left  to  them  but  their  business,  and  when  they  return 
to  their  native  lands,  they  have  not  brought  that  with 
them,  and  where  their  business  is  their  heart  is  also. 
Glamour,  no,  but  business,  yes,—  as  one  would  say  in 
the  phraseology  of  the  country. 

Seldom  missing  an  opportunity  of  making  inquiries 
as  to  the  business  success  of  all  sorts  of  people  with 
whom  I  came  into  contact,  I  might  set  forth  some  quite 


204  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

remarkable  examples  of  how  the  conditions  in  Buenos 
Ayres  compare  very  favourably,  from  certain  points 
of  view,  with  those  at  home,  were  it  not  that  I  hesitate 
to  use  the  experience  of  friends  in  such  wise  that  some 
readers  might  identify  them. 

M.  Jules  Huret,  in  his  admirable  work,  to  which 
reference  has  already  been  made,  offers  many  notable 
examples  of  prosperous  careers  in  different  branches 
of  trade  and  commerce,  related  to  him  in  his  various 
travels  throughout  the  Republic;  but  in  every  case 
these  narratives  were  given  for  publication.  I  cannot 
fairly  do  the  same  with  much  of  the  information  in  my 
possession,  but  I  purpose  giving,  as  nearly  as  may  be, 
the  particulars  of  three  comparatively  young  men  of 
my  acquaintance,  and  contrasting  their  present  condi- 
tions with  what,  in  all  likelihood,  would  have  been 
their  positions  in  England  had  they  remained  at  home. 

The  first,  whom  I  shall  distinguish  as  Mr.  X.,  is  a 
young  man  of  very  considerable  natural  talent.  In 
personal  characteristics  he  is  the  very  antithesis  of  the 
"  pushing  "  young  fellow,  and,  I  rather  suspect,  had 
permitted  others  to  push  ahead  of  him  at  home.  At 
all  events,  essaying  a  venture  on  his  own  account  in 
London,  it  turned  out  badly,  and  he  found  it  necessary 
to  take  up  his  profession  again  as  an  employee  in  a 
moderately  responsible  position,  receiving  not  more 
than  $1750  per  annum.  His  integrity  being  above 
suspicion,  his  ability  unquestioned  in  his  particular  pro- 
fession, which  calls  for  much  precise  knowledge  and 
long  years  of  study,  he  happened  fortunately,  when 
he  applied  for  the  post  of  Manager  of  a  very  large 
enterprise  in  the  Argentine,  favourably  to  impress 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         205 

the  selective  committee,  and  was  engaged.  In  this 
very  responsible  position  he  has,  to  my  knowledge, 
greatly  improved  the  conditions  of  his  company,  ex- 
tended its  work,  increased  its  profits,  sent  up  its  shares. 
His  remuneration,  instead  of  being  $1750  per  annum, 
is  about  $10,000,  and  may  increase,  according  to  re- 
sults, to  double  that  figure.  The  business  in  which  he 
is  engaged  is  of  the  same  nature  as  he  has  been  em- 
ployed in  all  his  life,  and  to  which  he  was  trained  in 
the  provinces  of  England. 

Take  Mr.  Y.,  another  young  man,  outwardly  more 
suggestive  of  liveliness,  sparkle,  capacity,  than  Mr. 
X.,  but  probably  no  better  endowed  intellectually. 
Mr.  Y.,  who  is  not  quite  thirty,  is  at  the  present  time 
director  of  the  South  American  interests  of  an  im- 
portant English  firm,  handling  contracts  in  the  Argen- 
tine and  in  Uruguay  for  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
pounds,  and  himself  earning  a  salary  and  commission 
something  in  the  neighbourhood  of  $10,000  per  an- 
num. This  Mr.  Y.  would  have  had  reason  to  count 
himself  singularly  fortunate  if,  remaining  in  England 
and  engaged  in  the  same  class  of  work,  he  at  the  present 
time  had  been  enjoying  a  salary  of  say  $2500  per  an- 
num. Moreover,  in  common  with  Mr.  X.,  he  has  that 
splendid  influence  in  character  building  which  comes 
from  the  fine  sense  of  self-reliance  imposed  upon  one 
by  having  to  control  the  destinies  of  many  employees 
and  decide  large  and  vital  questions  on  one's  own  in- 
itiative. Such  positions  for  men  of  thirty  to  forty  are 
extremely  few  in  England,  but  are  by  no  means  un- 
common in  South  America. 

As  regards  Mr.  Z.,  I  think  I  may  state  without  fear 


206  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  identifying  him  that  his  profession  is  that  of  archi- 
tect. The  architects  in  Buenos  Ayres  are  among  the 
busiest  of  professional  men.  One  can  scarcely  walk 
for  five  minutes  in  any  direction  without  noting  build- 
ing operations,  and  for  scores  of  years  to  come  the 
more  central  parts  of  the  city  will  be  in  a  state  of  re- 
building, as  all  the  smaller  and  old-fashioned  houses 
are  bound  to  give  way  to  modern  steel  and  concrete 
structures.  Hence  the  skill  of  the  architect  is  in  high 
request,  and  likely  so  to  continue,  although  it  must  be 
admitted  there  is  plenty  of  competition,  as  Italians, 
French,  German,  and  all  nationalities  are  represented 
in  the  ranks  of  the  profession.  The  extraordinary 
cosmopolitan  character  of  the  city  also  justifies  the 
variety  of  races  among  its  architects,  every  conceiv- 
able European  style,  not  to  mention  many  inconceiv- 
able styles,  being  favoured  by  the  property  owners. 
Mr.  Z.,  however,  is  an  Englishman,  and  as  an  archi- 
tect I  confess  he  is  no  better  than  the  ruck,  but  I  be- 
lieve he  has  the  recommendation  of  being  honest,  and 
for  that  reason,  if  for  no  outstanding  ability  of  any 
other  kind,  he  has  earned  substantial  success,  so  that 
it  is  no  unusual  thing  for  him,  in  the  course  of  the  year, 
to  find  himself  in  pocket  to  the  tune  of  $15,000  to 
$20,000,  which,  I  imagine,  is  by  no  means  an  ordinary 
sum  for  even  an  architect  of  unusual  ability  to  earn  in 
England. 

It  so  happens  that  not  a  single  one  of  these  young 
men  I  have  mentioned  really  likes  Buenos  Ayres,  but 
each  is  delighted  with  his  particular  work,  and  I  am 
strongly  of  opinion  that  in  the  fulness  of  time  they 
will  all  become  submerged  in  the  said  work.  That  is 


ITALIAN  "COLONOS"  AND  THEIR  "RANCHO"  IN  THE  ARGENTINE, 


A  VILLAGE  WHEELWRIGHT  ix  THE  ARGENTINE  "CAMP.' 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         207 

to  say,  they  will  go  the  way  of  those  I  have  already 
described,  who,  yearning  at  heart  to  be  home  again,  be- 
come so  engrossed  in  their  business,  trade,  or  pro- 
fession, that  unconsciously  with  the  lapse  of  years  they 
grow  into  veritable  slaves  of  their  business  and  cannot 
live  without  it.  If  a  man  can  make  his  fortune  under, 
four  or  five  years  in  Buenos  Ayres  and  then  withdraw, 
all  may  be  well;  but  beyond  that  time,  it  seems  to  me, 
the  genuine  fascination  which  the  spirited  commercial 
life  of  the  place  exercises  on  any  keen  man  of  business 
will  become  too  strong  to  permit  of  his  cutting  the 
traces,  and  I  am  just  as  sure  that  a  day  will  come  when, 
in  totting  up  his  profits  and  losses,  he  will  feel  he  ought 
to  put  down  on  the  debit  side  of  his  ledger  of  life  a 
very  large  figure  to  represent  what  he  has  lost  in  his 
long  years  of  exile  from  his  home  land. 

In  connection  with  Mr.  Z.,  I  mentioned  the  fact  of 
his  honesty,  which,  it  goes  without  saying,  applies 
equally  to  Mr.  X.  and  Mr.  Y.  Here  we  touch  one  of 
the  most  important  matters  in  the  business  life  of  South 
America.  Honesty  is  a  quality  that  does  not  bulk  un- 
duly in  South  American  character.  Having  had 
peculiar  opportunities  of  testing  the  honesty  of  the 
general  public  throughout  the  Argentine,  Uruguay,  and 
Chili,  and  having  listened  to  all  sorts  of  local  and  for- 
eign stories  about  the  shameless  disregard  for  the  or- 
dinary usages  of  decent  straight-forward  business  said 
to  be  characteristic  of  one  country  more  than  another, 
I  am  persuaded  that  there  is  little  to  choose  in  this 
matter  between  South  Americans  in  general,  if  we  ex- 
clude the  Indians  and  mestizos,  or  half-breeds.  In 
Buenos  Ayres  it  takes  very  little  searching  indeed  to 


208  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

discover  Englishmen   as   dishonest   and  unworthy  of 
trust  as  any  scoundrelly  native.     Nay,  I  am  not  at  all 
sure  that  worthless   English  emigrants   and  English- 
speaking  portenos  —  children  born  of  English  parents 
in  the  Argentine,  who  speak  both  languages  equally 
well  —  cannot  give  most  of  the  tricky  natives  and  un- 
xScrupulous  foreigners  a  strong  lead  in  the  matter  of 
/  dishonesty. 

Individually,  I  found  among  the  native  population 
a  very  high  percentage  of  men  of  the  strictest  com- 
mercial integrity,  men  who  were  caballeros  cor- 
rectisimos,  not  merely  in  the  formal  sense  of  the 
phrase,  but  in  actuality.  At  the  same  time,  I  am 
forced  to  confess  that  there  is  something  in  the  at- 
losphere  of  Buenos  Ayres  which  seems  to  depreciate 
the  importance  of  business  rectitude.  Ask  me  to  de- 
scribe this  with  any  definiteness,  and  I  am  afraid  I 
should  fail,  but  the  fact  remains  that  one  is  conscious 
of  the  feeling  every  day  and  in  every  business  rela- 
tionship. It  may  be  the  influence  of  old  tradition, 
the  result  of  the  Argentine  capital  having  been  for 
so  long  the  resort  of  all  sorts  of  foreign  criminals  and 
justice-bilkers,  as  much  as  the  experience  of  business 
men  in  their  dealings  with  Buenos  Ayres  houses  to- 
day. But  whatever  the  extent  or  reality  of  this  com- 
mercial dishonesty  may  be,  it  is  a  factor  to  be  reckoned 
with,  and  in  all  negotiations  with  commercial  houses 
it  is  no  doubt  well  to  look  carefully  at  their  references 
if  their  credentials  are  unknown.  A  procurador,  or 
attorney,  for  instance,  who  was  employed  very  suc- 
cessfully in  connection  with  certain  legal  matters  that 
came  under  my  notice,  and  who  did  his  work  so  well 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         209 

and  so  profitably  to  those  who  feed  him  that  it  was 
suggested  to  establish  in  other  parts  of  the  country 
similar  connections  for  the  recovery  of  debts,  said  to 
his  clients,  "  Unfortunately,  I  know  of  no  other  honest 
procurador  in  the  Argentine  with  whom  I  could  co- 
operate in  carrying  out  your  suggestion  "  1  The  gen- 
tleman who  reported  the  matter  to  me  stated  that  he 
entirely  believed  his  attorney  spoke  the  truth  as  to  the 
lack  of  honest  lawyers,  and  he  even  had  his  doubts 
about  him !  But  how  can  we  expect  the  legal  fraternity 
to  be  shiningly  honest  when  we  know  that  justice  is  poi- 
soned at  its  source;  that  the  Argentine  Law  Courts 
have  nothing  to  learn  and  can  probably  teach  even 
Tammany  something  new  in  chicanery? 

Eet  me  give  but  one  instance  of  how  justice  is 
ministered.  A  young  Spaniard,  one  of  many  em- 
ployed in  a  certain  undertaking  in  which  I  was 
interested,  had  to  be  discharged  for  dishonesty.  He 
was  an  attractive,  gentlemanly  young  man,  with  tastes 
beyond  his  means, —  which  is  all  that  needs  to  be  said 
of  nine-tenths  of  the  swindlers  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Dis- 
charged for  dishonesty,  he  was  immediately  admitted 
as  a  clerk  in  —  of  all  places  in  the  world  —  a  very 
prosperous  bank!  Within  six  weeks  of  his  admission 
to  the  bank,  he  contrived  to  steal  some  $3500,  a  por- 
tion of  which  went  to  wipe  out  gambling  debts,  some 
$1500  he  sent  to  Spain,  and  the  remainder,  nearly 
$1000,  he  lodged  in  another  bank.  Arrested,  he  was 
so  conscious  of  the  absolute  proof  of  his  guilt,  that 
he  signed  a  statement  written  by  his  own  lawyer  ad- 
mitting the  whole  matter,  hoping  thus  to  be  clemently 
dealt  with.  The  case  came  before  a  young  judge  who 


210  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

took  a  personal  liking  to  the  prisoner,  and  deliberately 
made  up  his  mind  to  discharge  him.  This  seemed  a 
difficult  thing  to  do  in  face  of  the  signed  confession. 

Among  the  witnesses  called  was  the  gentleman  who 
had  discharged  him  for  dishonesty  prior  to  his  be- 
ing admitted  to  the  bank.  This  gentleman  was  called 
because  the  prisoner  had  given  his  name  as  that  of  his 
previous  employer.  The  only  question  the  judge 
would  allow  the  witness  to  answer  was  "  When  in 
your  employment  did  the  prisoner  strike  you  as  a 
person  who  would  be  likely  to  have  committed  this 
forgery  in  the  bank?  "  The  witness,  having  no  wish 
to  force  the  prisoner  into  jail,  answered  "  No."  The 
judge  then  asked  the  prisoner  whether,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  his  alleged  confession  was  written  by  a  third 
person  and  only  signed  by  him,  he  had  been  fully  con- 
scious of  what  that  document  contained,  and  whether  he 
realised  precisely  the  gravity  of  the  admissions  therein. 
The  prisoner  seemed  somewhat  bewildered  as  to  how 
he  should  reply,  and,  not  quite  realising  that  the  judge 
had  actually  turned  himself  into  advocate  for  the  de- 
fence, seemed  on  the  point  of  committing  himself  by 
accepting  full  responsibility,  when  the  judge,  silencing 
him  and  whispering  with  the  clerk  for  a  few  moments, 
asked  the  prisoner  not  to  answer  until  he  had  con- 
sulted with  his  lawyer.  The  clerk  of  the  court  with- 
drew, with  a  sign  to  the  prisoner's  lawyer,  who,  also 
leaving  the  court,  returned  presently  and  whispered 
a  few  words  to  the  prisoner. 

The  forger  was  then  asked  by  the  judge  to  state 
exactly  how  the  confession  had  been  secured.  Now, 
nothing  loath,  he  brazenly  asserted  that  he  had  signed  it 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         211 

most  unwillingly,  not  realising  how  it  incriminated  him, 
and  so  forth.  Result:  prisoner  not  only  discharged, 
who,  according  to  the  law  of  the  land  could  have  been 
put  in  jail  for  three  years,  but  by  an  order  of  court,  the 
money  which  he  had  stolen  from  one  bank  and  lodged 
in  another,  and  which  had  meanwhile  been  arrested 
by  the  court,  restored  to  him! 

Is  it  surprising,  in  face  of  an  experience  such  as  this, 
that  the  business  world  teems  with  minor  employees  who 
have  been  guilty  of  all  sorts  of  thefts  and  dishonest 
practices,  but  whom  employers  have  not  prosecuted 
because  conviction  is  so  difficult  to  secure  and  legal 
expenses  are  so  heavy?  A  friend  of  mine  who  was 
robbed  of  $4000  by  an  employee,  who  forged  his  sig- 
nature and  imperilled  his  credit  in  various  directions, 
spent  so  much  time  and  money  in  endeavouring  to 
secure  the  conviction  of  the  wrongdoer  that  he  even- 
tually gave  up  the  struggle  and  left  him  to  be  liberated 
from  the  jail  where  he  had  lain  for  some  seven  or 
eight  months  without  a  trial. 

Here,  then,  is  probably  the  real  reason  of  this  feel- 
ing of  low  business  morality  which  undoubtedly  does 
prevail  in  Buenos  Ayres  —  the  laxity  of  the  law  and 
the  difficulty  of  securing  justice.  A  further  example 
and  one  of  very  recent  date  will  serve  to  show  to  what 
extent  audacity  attains  in  the  commercial  world  of 
Buenos  Ayres.  A  cinematograph  company  secured  at 
great  cost  from  a  European  firm  the  exclusive  right  to 
reproduce  an  important  film  throughout  the  Argentine, 
Uruguay  and  Chili.  In  due  course  the  film  arrived, 
and  was  placed  with  a  firm  of  photographic  experts  to 
make  a  number  of  copies  for  despatching  to  the  various 


212  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

centres  where  it  was  to  be  exhibited,  and  where  the 
exclusive  nature  of  the  exhibition  was  already  being 
loudly  trumpeted  in  the  press.  Those  entrusted  with 
the  making  of  the  copies  did  not  hesitate  to  multiply 
the  number  by  a  dozen  or  more,  and  to  sell  them  at 
high  prices  to  competitive  theatres.  In  this  delight- 
fully simple  way,  instead  of  one  theatre  in  one  town 
being  able,  as  it  had  announced,  to  give  the  exclusive 
exhibition  of  the  film,  some  eight  or  ten  theatres  were 
showing  their  unauthorised  copies  of  it  on  the  same 
evening. 

Confronted  with  such  facts,  it  is  hardly  a  matter  for 
surprise  that  many  foreign  merchants  look  upon  Ar- 
gentine transactions  with  suspicious  eye,  exacting  con- 
ditions of  payment  that  are  more  rigorous  than  apply 
in  other  quarters  of  the  mercantile  world.  In  the 
United  States,  I  believe,  and  in  England  certainly,  this 
feeling  of  Insecurity  does  exist,  and  exporters  are  usually 
chary  of  entering  into  negotiations  with  unproved 
houses  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Then,  again,  it  is  so  difficult 
to  find  local  representatives  of  strict  integrity  that  many 
large  firms  who  have  made  efforts  to  open  up  business 
out  there  have  eventually  given  up  the  task,  one  well- 
known  maker  of  a  very  profitable  line  of  stationery 
goods,  for  which  there  is  a  large  demand  in  Buenos 
Ayres,  confessing  to  me  that  over  a  period  of  years 
each  arrangement  he  had  made  for  local  representa- 
tion had  eventually  fallen  through,  owing  to  the  slack- 
ness or  dishonesty  of  his  agents. 

It  is  a  lamentable  fact  that  the  general  laxity  of 
business  morals  has  the  effect  of  developing  in  clever 
men  their  roguish  propensities,  with  the  consequence 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         213 

that  I  have  noticed  all  too  often  when  the  assistance 
obtainable  in  Buenos  Ayres  has  been  undeniably  com- 
petent as  regards  intelligence  and  resource,  it  has  failed 
in  the  matter  of  honesty,  and,  inversely,  where  honesty 
has  been  beyond  suspicion,  these  other  desirable  quali- 
ties have  been  lacking.  And  thus  we  have  employers 
deliberately,  with  eyes  open,  utilising  the  services  of 
persons  whom  they  distrust  and  whom  they  know  to 
be  capable  of  swindling  whenever  opportunity  serves, 
simply  because  their  other  abilities  are  essential  to 
the  creation  or  extension  of  the  business  in  hand.  The 
atmosphere  of  suspicion  thus  engendered,  and  the  high 
standard  of  incompetency  in  almost  every  branch  of 
service,  are  two  factors  that  must  enter  into  the  seri- 
ous consideration  of  all  engaging  in  the  business  life 
of  the  country. 

I  could  describe  at  least  a  dozen  individuals  with 
whom,  during  my  eight  months  in  Buenos  Ayres,  I 
came  into  touch,  all  persons  of  the  most  obvious  ca- 
pacity and  worthy  of  employment,  had  that  capacity 
been  wisely  directed,  but  each,  on  close  investigation, 
so  tainted  with  suspicion  of  trickery  and  trailing  behind 
him  an  inglorious  record,  that  it  was  impossible  to 
utilise  his  services.  One  person  in  particular,  with 
whom  I  almost  entered  into  an  important  literary  ven- 
ture, whose  scholarly  attainments  were  unquestionable, 
and  who,  at  first,  seemed  a  thorough  gentleman,  had, 
as  I  subsequently  discovered,  served  three  terms  in 
provincial  penitentiaries,  and  had  even  been  guilty  of 
attempted  murder,  which  crime  he  had  planned  purely 
and  simply  for  business  ends,  with  a  view  to  "  putting 
away  "  a  gentleman  whom  he  and  another  had  swindled 


214  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

to  the  extent  of  nearly  $5000,  and  who  was  proving 
inconsiderate  enough  to  invoke  the  law  against  the 
swindlers.  This  person,  whose  portrait  and  finger 
marks  are  duly  filed  in  the  Criminal  Bureau  of  Buenos 
Ayres  —  where,  by  the  way,  the  system  of  thumb 
prints  originated  —  had,  during  his  various  encounters 
with  the  law,  become  intimate  with  a  comisario,  who, 
prior  to  entering  the  police  service,  had  himself  been 
a  successful  criminal,  and  continued,  not  unsuccess- 
fully, his  criminal  career  in  his  new  capacity.  With 
the  aid  of  this  official,  the  "  liter'y  gent  "  was  able  to 
defeat  the  ends  of  justice,  and  for  aught  I  know  is  still 
busy  under  police  protection  fleecing  new  victims  in 
or  about  Calle  Florida. 

The  laxity  of  business  morality  is,  of  course,  a  con- 
mitant  of  the  laxity  of  general  morals,  or  an  effect 
of  the  latter,  most  of  the  commercial  obliquity  that 
exists  having  a  first  cause  in  the  immoral  life  of  the 
offenders.  Just  as  it  is  the  fashion  of  many  Argen- 
tines, in  addition  to  maintaining  their  legitimate  wives 
and  families,  to  possess  openly  two  or  three  quendas; 
so  among  those  who  are  financially  ill  equipped  to  play 
the  pasha,  the  imitative  spirit  asserts  itself,  and 
even  down  to  the  office  boys,  it  will  be  found  when 
things  go  wrong  with  them  there  is  "  a  woman  in 
the  case."  This,  and  gambling,  account  for  probably 
two-thirds  of  the  commercial  dishonesty,  and  the  re- 
maining third  has  its  most  likely  source  in  a  pitiful 
effort  to  imitate  their  betters  in  the  matter  of  high  liv- 
ing, where  the  plainest  of  fare  and  the  humblest  ac- 
commodation cost  more  than  genuine  luxury  does  with 
us.  Drinking  enters  very  slightly  into  the  account,  as 


W       "O 
0       « 


I  § 

H  o 

in 

55  ' 

—•  as 

r  S 

O  'H 

Q  rt 


H 

H      I 

§        0. 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         215 

it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  large  community  where 
less  tippling  exists  than  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Whatever 
there  is  of  that  will  be  found  chiefly  among  British 
and  German  residents,  so  that  any  anti-temperance 
partisan  desirous  of  proving  that  a  temperate  public 
is  not  necessarily  a  moral  one,  will  find  abundant  ar- 
gument ready  to  his  hand  in  the  life  of  the  Argentine. 
Turning  from  this  unpleasant  aspect  of  the  business 
life,  which  is,  after  all,  only  one  phase  of  it,  and  must 
not  be  allowed  to  darken  completely  our  view  of  the 
commercial  Argentine,  there  are  several  other  aspects 
that  must  engage  our  attention,  and  perhaps  to  more 
profit.  British  readers  especially  will  rejoice  to 
know  that  their  own  country  and  its  manufacturers  oc- 
cupy a  pre-eminent  position  in  the  affections  of  the  Ar- 
gentine people.  While  on  every  hand  there  is  evi- 
dence of  great  activity  on  the  part  of  the  Germans, 
who  have  laid  themselves  out,  and  with  fair  measure 
of  success,  to  secure  a  large  slice  of  the  Argentine  im- 
port trade,  there  is  not  only  in  the  Argentine  but 
throughout  all  South  America  a  widespread  distrust  oJ 
the  German.  He  is  noted  for  commercial  methods 
that  are  no  more  praiseworthy  than  many  that  prevail 
locally.  His  propensity  for  showing  samples  that  are 
much  superior  to  the  goods  supplied  is  notorious,  and 
such  progress  as  he  has  made  may  be  regarded  as 
largely  the  result  of  a  readiness  to  flatter  the  native 
buyer  by  speaking  the  language  of  the  country  and 
dealing  with  him  in  terms  of  local  usage.  The 
Britisher,  on  the  other  hand,  is  guilty  of  the  coldest 
indifference  to  the  convenience  of  the  Argentine  con- 
sumer. 


216  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

I  have,  for  instance,  met  more  than  one  traveller 
or  a  British  house  who  has  been  visiting  all  the  South 
American  capitals  and  the  great  centres  of  population 
with  samples  of  goods,  and  has  not  been  able 
even  to  ask  for  a  glass  of  beer  in  Spanish.  I  re- 
call one  gentleman  in  particular  who,  by  the  sheer 
merit  of  the  goods  he  was  offering,  had  done  a  very 
considerable  business,  and  yet  was  so  hopelessly  ig- 
norant of  the  native  tongue  that  he  could  not  even 
pronounce  the  names  of  the  firms  who  had  bought  from 
him,  or  the  streets  in  which  their  offices  were  situated ! 
This  never  happens  with  a  German  traveller.  He  may 
make  the  most  atrocious  mistakes  with  the  language, 
but  he  at  least  does  attempt,  and  usually  succeeds,  to 
explain  himself  without  the  aid  of  an  interpreter,  and 
the  Spanish  American  accepts  any  .effort  on  the  part  of 
a  foreigner  to  speak  his  native  tongue  as  a  compliment 
to  himself  and  strives  valiantly  to  understand  what  the 
foreigner  is  endeavouring  to  express. 

Then  again,  British  manufacturers  show  an  un- 
ruffled disdain  for  lqcal_j#ndkioas--in  many  of  the  ar- 
ticles they  supply.  Take,  for  instance,  the  sailors1 
hats  so  much  worn  by  children  in  England,  and  even 
more  in  vogue  with  the  minos  of  the  Argentine,  where 
everything  that  touches  their  naval  aspirations  is  highly 
popular.  Thousands  of  these  are  imported  from  Eng- 
land, and  it  always  struck  me  as  ludicrous  to  witness 
little  Argentines  going  about  with  u  H.  M.  S.  Redoubt- 
able,"  "H.  M.  S.  Dreadnought,"  "  H.  M.  S.  Ben- 
bow,"  or  some  such  peculiarly  British  name,  on  their 
hats.  Why  on  earth  do  not  the  British  manufacturers 
have  the  common-sense  to  ascertain  the  names  of  the 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         217 

principal  vessels  in  the  Argentine  Navy,  and  use  these 
for  the  hats  they  export  to  the  republic?  Evidently 
the  Germans  are  doing  so,  as  occasionally  you  will  see 
"  Sarmiento,"  "  Belgrano,"  "  San  Martin,"  in  place 
of  the  meaningless  British  names,  and  I  was  told  these 
did  not  come  from  England.  The  patriotism  of  the 
Argentine  and  of  every  other  South  American  is  such 
that  he  would  undoubtedly  buy  an  inferior  hat  for  his 
boy  if  it  bore  the  name  of  a  national  warship,  and  even 
pay  more  for  it  than  for  a  superior  British-made  hat 
with  the  name  of  a  British  man-of-war  thereon. 

All  sorts  of  sanitary  appliances  are  also  imported 
from  Great  Britain,  with  the  instructions  for  their  use 
painted  or  engraved  in  the  English  language.  Take 
"  geysers  "  as  an  example.  It  often  occurred  to  me 
in  using  bathrooms  in  various  part  of  the  country, 
where  the  geyser  is  an  inevitable  fitting,  that  it  was  not 
only  bad  business,  but  very  dangerous  for  these  ap- 
pliances to  be  in  use  with  English  instructions  engraved 
upon  them.  The  working  of  a  geyser  is  at  best  none 
too  simple,  and  when  every  detail  of  its  manipulation 
is  explained  on  the  machine  in  a  language  of  which 
nine-tenths  of  the  users  are  totally  ignorant,  the  possi- 
bility of  putting  it  out  of  order  or  of  setting  the  place 
on  fire,  is  considerable.  Lavatory  basins  with  "  Hot  " 
and  "  Cold  "  mean  nothing  to  a  native,  who  can  only 
think  of  caliente  or  of  fria.  The  same  applies  to  pro- 
prietary medicines  imported  from  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  (though  American  exporters  are 
waking  up  to  the  need  of  printing  instructions  in  Span- 
ish), whereas  German,  French  and  Italian  medicines 
are  invariably  supplied  with  Spanish  directions. 


2i8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

In  short,  the  pre-eminence  of  British  goods,  which 
I  noted  wherever  I  went,  not  only  in  the  Argentine 
but  throughout  all  South  America,  is  in  many  respects 
undeserved.  That  pre-eminence  is  due  to  nothing  but 
honesty  and  commercial  integrity.  The  British  manu- 
facturer is,  with  few  exceptions,  an  honest  man,  selling 
a  good  article  at  a  reasonable  price;  he  keeps  his  bar- 
gains, and  fortunately  for  him  palabra  inglesa  (the 
word  of  an  Englishman)  is  honoured  throughout 
Latin  America.  But  the  German,  if  he  cares,  can 
also  make  good  articles,  quite  as  good  as  the  English, 
and  many  German  firms  are  honourable  exceptions  to 
the  rule  I  have  mentioned  above,  so  that  once  an  im- 
porter has  secured  German  goods  which  are  as  sound 
as  the  English  and  have  been  made  to  suit  local  re- 
quirements, the  English  manufacturer  has  met  the  most 
serious  kind  of  competition. 

I  attribute  a  great  deal  of  the  indifference  shown  by 
British  exporters  to  lack  of  proper  representation  on 
the  spot.  So  long  as  the  demand  for  every  class  of 
imported  article  continues  as  lively  as  it  is  at  present, 
and  the  local  agent  can  dispose  of  the  stuff  he  receives 
without  undue  trouble,  he  does  not  worry  about  mak- 
ing his  service  more  valuable  to  his  clients  by  insist- 
ing on  manufacturers  doing  their  business  in  terms  of 
the  country.  Meanwhile,  one  finds  everywhere  the  most 
remarkable  evidence  of  preference  for  British  goods, 
British  brands  of  tea,  British  preserves,  pickles,  sauces, 
sweets,  British  machinery,  clothes,  furniture,  are  every- 
where in  prominent  use  and  demand.  A  good  deal 
of  this  preference  is  also  the  natural  result  of  British 
capital  having  been  so  largely  used  to  develop  the  coun- 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         219 

try, —  they  say  locally  "  British  money  and  Italian  la- 
bour have  made  the  Argentine  " — but  let  me  warn  the 
British  manufacturer  that  things  cannot  continue  as 
they  are  indefinitely;  this  happy  condition  of  demand 
exceeding  supply  will  change,  and  meanwhile  if  he  is 
making  no  serious  effort  to  consider  more  carefully 
the  needs  of  his  customers  and  to  render  them  better 
service,  his  astute  German  competitor  will  be  "  climb- 
ing upward  in  the  night  "  ! 

While  British  and  American  exporters  are  not  al- 
ways represented  as  well  as  they  might  be  in  the  South 
American  market,  there  is  yet  another  point  for  their 
consideration  —  are  they  properly  staffed  at  home  for 
dealing  with  this  particular  field?  I  believe  that  not 
a  few  have  clerks  in  their  foreign  departments  entirely 
ignorant  of  South  American  Geography,  if  the 
"  howlers  "  they  commit  are  any  criterion.  The  ig- 
norance which  prevails  in  Great  Britain  in  this  con- 
nection is  notorious,  and  from  what  I  have  been  able 
to  discover,  general  knowledge  in  the  United  States  is 
no  more  advanced, —  less  if  anything. 

One  example  coming  within  my  own  experience  will 
serve  to  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Staying  at  our  hotel 
in  Buenos  Ayres  was  one  of  the  managers  of  a  very 
large  British  enterprise,  with  agents  in  different  parts 
of  North  and  South  America.  One  of  these  was  sta- 
tioned at  Punta  Arenas,  a  considerable  town  in  the  far 
south  of  Chili,  on  the  Straits  of  Magellan.  It  is  the 
port  for  a  vast  country  in  which  sheep  farming  has  of 
recent  years  been  making  remarkable  strides,  and 
where  wealth  is  growing  rapidly.  This  gentleman 
chanced  to  be  on  his  way  to  England,  and  made  a  break 


220  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

at  Buenos  Ayres  to  visit  his  superior  at  our  hotel. 
Among  the  subjects  discussed  by  them  was  the  curious 
fact  that  for  three  years  in  succession  the  agent  had 
received  at  Punta  Arenas  an  account  from  the  head 
office  for  goods  supplied  during  the  year  to  a  certain 

Sefior  P ,  whom  he  had  failed  entirely  to  trace. 

One  evening,  as  the  manager  and  the  agent  were  scan- 
ning the  list  of  hotel  guests,  the  latter  exclaimed  "  Why, 

there's  a  Sefior  P .     I  wonder  if  that  might  be 

the  man  I'm  after?  "  Further  inquiry  proved  that 
the  gentleman  in  question  was  a  well-known  merchant 
from  Asuncion,  the  capital  of  Paraguay,  whose  busi- 
ness had  brought  him  on  a  visit  to  Buenos  Ayres,  and 

that  he  was  none  other  than  the  mysterious  Mr.  P 

whose  accounts  were  regularly  sent  to  Punta  Arenas 
for  collection.  The  point  of  the  story  is  that  while 
Punta  Arenas  is  distant  1350  nautical  miles,  or  a  full 
four  days'  steaming  south  of  Buenos  Ayres,  Asuncion 
lies  825  to  the  north  of  Buenos  Ayres  —  another  three 
to  four  days'  journey  by  rail  and  river, —  but  the  ex- 
port department  of  the  English  firm  was  so  little  versed 
in  these  matters  that  it  selected  its  remotest  agent  to 
collect  the  debt!  Punta  Arenas  and  Asuncion  were 
both  in  South  America,  and  that  was  enough  to  estab- 
lish a  connection !  This  is  but  one  of  many  instances 
I  could  give  to  show  the  lack  of  geographical  knowl- 
'edge  even  among  British  firms  trading  with  the  coun- 
try. 

Manufacturers  in  the  United  States  show  a  much 
more  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  possibilities  of  Ar- 
gentine trade  than  those  of  Great  Britain,  although  the 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES        221 

latter  handle  double  the  volume  of  business.*  Vari- 
ous trade  journals  published  in  the  Spanish  language 
emanate  from  different  parts  of  the  United  States  and 
are  circulated  assiduously  among  these  Latin  Repub- 
lics, though,  I  fear,  so  far  with  inadequate  result.  It 
is  the  misfortune  of  the  United  States  that  not  a  few 
of  its  citizens  who  have  gone  south  in  search  of 
"  Spanish  gold  "  have  not  always  been  noted  for  their 
business  rectitude.  The  result  is  that  while  palabra 
inglesa  has  become  an  accepted  phrase  in  the  language 
of  the  country,  so  has  yanqui  bluff,  which  may  be  said 
to  stand  for  any  sort  of  crooTceliness.  There  are,  of 
course,  as  I  shall  have  to  point  out  further  on,  other 
reasons  of  a  political  nature  which  tend  to  make  the 
South  American  at  once  jealous  and  suspicious  of 
North  Americans,  and  against  these  influences  it  is  the 
duty  of  all  good  business  men  in  the  United  States 
wishful  to  extend  the  market  for  their  national  prod- 
ucts, to  fight  incessantly,  making  special  efforts  to  show 
to  the  business  man  of  the  southern  continent  that  they 
are  actuated  by  nothing  but  the  strongest  desire  to 
cultivate  a  friendly  commercial  intercourse  and  an  in- 
creasing exchange  of  commodities  between  the  North 
and  the  South.  At  the  present  time,  the  United  States 
is  the  chief  source  of  supply  for  office  furniture,  type- 
writers, cash  registers,  and  also  competes  with  con- 
siderable success  in  the  market  for  agricultural  ma- 
chinery. But  in  all  these  directions,  and  especially  the 
last-named,  there  is  enormous  room  for  expansion. 

*  British  exports  to  the  Argentine  in  1912  amounted  to  $103,555,485, 
while  United  States  exports  totalled  $53,158,179. 


222  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Here  is  another  aspect  of  business  life  that  calls  for 
the  careful  consideration  of  all  who  are  ambitious  of 
securing  a  share  of  the  profits  that  await  the  seller  in 
these  lively  markets  of  the  south.  The  natural  pros- 
f  perity  of  the  country  is  considerably  exaggerated  owing 
)  to  the  ease  with  which  it  has  been  able  to  borrow  from 
\  Europe,  and  these  heavy  borrowings  have  led  to  gen- 
eral extravagance,  raising  the  sense  of  prosperity  be- 
yond what  is  justified  by  intrinsic  values.  I  do  not 
suggest  for  one  moment  that  borrowing  has  vastly 
exceeded  the  potentialities  of  the  country,  but  I  do  as- 
sert that  it  has  anticipated  these  potentialities,  and  to 
that  extent  discounted  future  development.  The  pos- 
sibilities of  the  Argentine  are  colossal,  and  its  power 
of  recuperation  after  the  severest  trials,  such  as  ruined 
harvests  or  destruction  of  cattle  and  sheep  through 
drought,  amazing.  In  this  connection,  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  say  more  than  that  in  one  single  summer  the 
country  has  suffered  the  loss  of  several  million  sheep 
owing  to  a  prolonged  drought,  without  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  being  conscious  of  any  financial 
strain  from  so  great  a  destruction  of  capital.  The 
British  makers  of  sheep-dip,  however,  would  prob- 
ably suffer  a  decrease  of  some  thousands  of  pounds 
in  their  exports  to  the  Argentine  that  year,  and 
British  wool-buyers  who  swarm  over  to  the  River  Plate 
each  year,  would  have  to  pay  a  great  deal  more  for 
their  purchases,  owing  to  the  shortage  of  supply. 

Still,  the  fact  remains  that,  due  largely  to  the  popu- 
lar conception  of  the  Argentine  as  the  new  Eldorado 
for  European  manufacturers,  enormous  sums  of 
money  are  annually  being  wasted  by  ill-advised  efforts 


o 

s  * 

3   .2 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES        223 

to  secure  business  vf  or  which  competition  has  suddenly 
become  keen.  Now,  we  have  to  remember  that  with 
a  borrowing  people  an  element  of  thriftlessness  is  in- 
evitable, and  that  there  is  a  necessarily  high  percentage 
of  wastage  in  the  heavy  loans  which  the  country  has 
secured  from  Europe.  Hence  that  general  sense  of 
prosperity  and  abundance  which  on  closer  examination 
is  often  found  to  be  more  apparent  than  real.  Right 
through  the  Argentine  this  spirit  of  borrowing  prevails. 
They  are  a  nation  of  borrowers,  and  in  all  ranks  of 
society  —  by  which  is  meant  the  various  divisions 
graded  according  to  the  supposed  dimensions  of  their 
banking  accounts  or  their  credit  —  the  one  notion  of 
doing  business  is  by  drawing  on  the  Bank  of  the  Fu- 
ture. The  countless  thousands  of  land-sales,  which 
have  brought  unequalled  prosperity  to  one  class  of  the 
community  and  riches  to  the  leading  newspapers  (daily 
crammed  with  advertisements  of  these  auctions)  have 
been  and  still  are  conducted  on  the  principle  of 
mensualldadeSy  or  monthly  payments.  The  hire  pur- 
chase system  is  universal.  Mortgage  banks  abound  and 
flourish  on  interest  rates  that  range  anywhere  from 
8  per  cent,  to  14  per  cent,  many  such  banks  offering 
depositors  7  per  cent,  per  annum  for  their  money, 
which  they  lend  out  at  10  per  cent,  or  12  per  cent,  to 
help  landowners  in  the  development  of  their  proper- 
ties. You  will  be  told  by  local  residents  that  this  high 
rate  of  interest  is  perfectly  compatible  with  the  ca- 
pabilities of  the  country,  and  that  the  Englishman,  with 
his  time-honoured  notions  of  4^  per  cent,  on  land 
mortgage,  is  a  hopeless  back  number  in  the  Argen- 
tine. There  may  be  some  truth  in  this,  but  it  is  diffi- 


224  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

cult  to  get  away  from  the  feeling  that  there  is  the  hec- 
tic flush  of  unhealthiness  in  any  system  that  demands 
such  high  rates  for  its  financial  accommodation. 

As  one  could  fill  a  whole  book  discussing  nothing 
else  than  the  aspects  of  the  various  branches  of  com- 
mercial enterprise,  all  so  different  in  their  essentials 
from  most  of  our  home  conditions,  I  am  making  no  at- 
tempt to  enter  into  detailed  consideration  of  the  sub- 
ject, but  to  illustrate  broadly  the  danger  I  have  hinted 
at,  arising  from  the  almost  uncanny  feeling  of  pros- 
perity which  the  peculiar  conditions  of  the  country  have 
induced. 

I  may  touch  briefly  on  the  motor-car  business.  Al- 
though, as  I  have  already  stated,  there  are  few  coun- 
tries in  the  world  less  attractive  from  the  point  of  view 
of  motoring  than  the  Argentine,  where  roads  such  as 
we  know  them  in  Europe,  or  even  in  North  America, 
simply  do  not  exist;  and  no  large  city  so  ill-adapted 
for  motoring  as  Buenos  Ayres,  where  the  principal 
streets  are  extremely  narrow  and  badly  kept,  while 
those  of  the  suburbs  are  almost  entirely  unpaved;  the 
popularity  of  the  motor  car  as  an  article  of  luxury  and 
ostentation  is  supreme.  The  importation  of  expensive 
cars  was  proceeding  in  the  most  reckless  manner  dur- 
ing my  stay  there  in  1912,  with  the  result  that  I  was 
informed  by  one  of  the  leading  automobile  dealers 
whom  I  met  in  Chili  some  six  months  after  leaving  the 
River  Plate,  and  who  had  come  over  to  spy  out  the 
Transandine  possibilities,  that  it  was  estimated  by  the 
various  houses  dealing  in  cars  at  the  end  of  the  1913 
season  that  there  were  no  fewer  than  twelve  hundred 
unsold  cars  in  the  store-rooms  of  the  numerous  agencies 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         225 

in  Buenos  Ayres.  In  the  previous  season,  I  think  the 
highest  number  I  saw  on  a  motor  car  was  in  the  4OOo's. 
No  wonder  there  was  general  talk  of  "  the  Motor 
Crisis  "  in  1913  ! 

In  my  walks  abroad  during  1912,  it  was  an  endless 
source  of  wonder  to  me  to  contemplate  the  folly  of  the 
European  companies  in  their  mad  scramble  for  this  busi- 
ness. I  saw  dozens  of  establishments  being  opened 
at  enormous  cost,  stocked  with  expensive  cars  and 
served  by  retinues  of  gorgeous  youths  who  were  to  sell 
these  to  the  fabulously  wealthy  Argentines.  In  eight 
months'  time,  I  saw  more  than  one  of  those  splendid 
establishments  shut  up,  and  doubtless  since  then  many 
another  has  pulled  down  its  shutters  (the  use  of  metal 
shutters  which  pull  down  from  above  is  universal). 
Of  one  in  particular  I  secured  some  inside  information. 
It  was  a  German  concern,  and  it  took  a  magnificent 
exposicion  in  a  fashionable  quarter,  paying  a  rent  of 
$4,000  per  month.  In  the  first  nine  months,  it  had 
sold  some  thirty-five  cars,  the  total  value  of  which  did 
not  greatly  exceed  the  rent  of  the  show-room.  In 
addition  to  the  show-room,  the  concern  in  question  re- 
quired a  large  warehouse  and  repajr  shop  in  another 
part  of  the  city,  so  that  the  man  of  business  will  be 
able  to  gather  how  such  an  enterprise  was  likely  to 
end.  Moreover,  most  of  those  cars  were  sold  at  so 
much  "  down,"  and  the  remainder  in  ten  monthly  in- 
stalments. I  suppose  it  is  a  safe  assumption  that  more 
money  has  been  lost  in  the  motor-car  business  in 
Buenos  Ayres  than  is  likely  to  be  made  in  it  for  some 
time  to  come. 

One  particularly  astute  foreigner  with  a  large  stock 


226  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  unsold  cars  devised  a  most  admirable  selling  scheme. 
He  made  a  bargain  with  a  number  of  willing  scoundrels 
that  each  should  go  to  a  certain  organisation  which 
provided  any  conceivable  article  to  its  customers  on 
the  instalment  system,  exacting  from  the  customer  an 
increased  price,  and  from  the  seller  of  the  article  a 
substantial  discount.  These  accomplices  of  the  motor 
agent,  each  through  this  medium  of  the  purchasing 
agency,  bought  one  of  his  motor  cars,  tendering  the 
initial  payment,  the  money  for  which  had  been  sup- 
plied by  him,  and  the  buying  agency  in  due  course  fur- 
nished the  car,  paying  the  vender  his  trade  price  for 
it.  Each  car  sold  in  this  manner  immediately  came 
back  into  the  possession  of  the  vender,  and  naturally 
the  accommodating  financiers  soon  discovered  no  sec- 
ond payments  were  forthcoming.  I  understand  this 
enterprising  motor-dealer  had  thus  netted  quite  a  re- 
spectable sum  on  his  surplus  stock  before  his  good  work 
was  interrupted  by  an  unwillingness  on  the  part  of  the 
purchasing  agency  to  continue! 

All  this  will  serve  to  suggest  the  general  looseness 
of  business  methods  and  the  accompanying  wastage 
that  is  going  on,  which  can  be  attributed  to  no  other 
cause  than  the  ease  with  which  the  country  has  been 
able  to  borrow,  and  the  avidity  with  which  foreign 
manufacturers  have  taken  the  bait  by  rushing  into  the 
market  without  due  consideration  of  its  risks  and  the 
characteristics  of  the  people  with  whom  business  has 
to  be  done.  In  no  wise  do  I  wish  to  belittle  the  com- 
mercial possibilities  of  the  country,  for  I  am  a  firm  and 
convinced  believer  that  South  America  generally  is 
"  the  Coming  Continent,"  and  that  Buenos  Ayres  is 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES        227 

probably  the  most  attractive  of  the  newer  business 
centres  of  the  world  to-day,  with  limitless  opportuni- 
ties for  sound  commercial  expansion  to  European  and 
North  American  manufacturers,  but  by  reason  of  its 
very  attractiveness,  the  freedom  with  which  money  cir- 
culates, and  the  readiness  with  which  the  people  bur- 
den themselves  with  responsibilities,  the  desideratum 
in  all  business  enterprise  is  not  boldness,  but  caution. 

One  of  the  most  experienced  native  business  men 
assured  me  that  in  land  speculation,  which  is  even  a 
more  popular  form  of  gambling  than  the  public  lot- 
tery—  servants  and  street  porters  actually  owning 
"  lots  "  they  have  never  seen,  and  never  will  see,  and 
for  which  they  are  paying  every  month, —  the  venders 
never  hesitate  to  make  the  number  of  instalments  run 
into  several  years,  in  order  to  make  the  individual  in- 
stalment as  low  as  possible,  because  the  purchaser,  in- 
capable of  a  "  long  view,"  in  no  case  realises  the  bur- 
den he  is  accepting,  and  merely  looks  at  the  amount  he 
has  to  pay  monthly.  The  sum  total  of  payments  is 
seldom  mentioned,  the  accepted  formula  being  a  small 
initial  payment  and  anything  from  twenty-four  to  sixty 
mensualidades,  also  of  comparatively  small  amounts. 
The  vast  majority  of  the  buyers  never  complete  their 
purchases,  surrendering,  after  a  year  or  two,  what  they 
have  paid,  together  with  the  land,  to  the  seller,  who 
will  probably  resell  it  to  another  purchaser,  who  will 
also  make  default,  and  in  this  way  the  land  speculator 
grows  rich. 

Every  day  the  newspapers  contain  particulars  of 
some  fresh  scheme  for  relieving  the  public  of  their 
money;  sharks  abound,  and  their  variety  is  endless. 


228  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  foreign  manufacturer, 
of  the  most  pernicious  forms  of  unfair  trading  is 
practised  in  connection  with  the  registration  of 
trade  marks.  The  law  grants  the  sole  title  in  a  trade 
mark  to  the  first  person  who  registers  it,  and  exacts 
from  him  no  evidence  whatsoever  that  he  is  registering 
that  which  is  his  own  property.  The  outcome  of  this 
delightful  state  of  affairs  is  that  a  fraternity  of  long- 
sighted speculators  has  grown  up  in  Buenos  Ayres, 
whose  business  is  to  keep  in  close  touch  with  the  com- 
mercial worlds  of  Europe  and  North  America,  and  the 
moment  a  manufacturer  places  a  new  article  on  these 
markets  and  registers  his  trade  mark,  one  of  these 
gentry  hastens  to  secure  the  proprietorship  of  that 
trade  mark  for  the  Argentine,  registering  it  as  his 
own.  His  next  movement  —  which  may  be  delayed 
for  a  year  or  so  —  is  to  write  to  the  foreign  manufac- 
turer and  to  state  that  he  shall  be  very  pleased  to  act 
as  agent  for  the  article  in  question,  which  he  thinks  he 
can  sell  to  advantage,  and  indeed  so  confident  is  he  of 
being  able  to  handle  it  successfully  that  he  has  taken 
the  trouble  to  register  the  trade  mark.  The  manufac- 
turer, if  he  wishes  to  introduce  the  article  in  South 
America,  must  then  either  appoint  this  nimble  gen- 
tleman his  agent  or  pay  him  an  extortionate  price  for 
the  right  to  sell  his  own  article  under  its  original  name. 
One  example  of  how  this  works  will  suffice.  The 
Oliver  typewriter  is  sold  in  the  Argentine  by  its  duly 
accredited  agent  as  the  "  Revilo,"  because  an  enter- 
prising citizen  had  forestalled  the  owners  by  regis- 
tering the  name  "  Oliver  "  as  applied  to  typewriters, 
and  the  company,  neither  caring  to  appoint  him  its 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES        229 

agent  nor  to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  selling  their  type- 
writer there,  adopted  the  plan  of  labelling  their  ma- 
chines for  sale  in  the  Argentine  with  the  name  spelt 
backward!  Some  famous  brands  of  Scotch  whisky 
cannot  be  sold  in  the  Argentine,  as  a  Jewish  gentleman 
is  in  possession  of  their  trade  marks,  which  he  regis- 
tered in  anticipation,  and  thus  the  whisky  drinker  will 
discover  all  sorts  of  unfamiliar  brands  specially  pre- 
pared for  export,  while  it  is  possible  that  the  pur- 
loiner  of  the  familiar  trade  mark  may  arrange  to  bot- 
tle any  sort  of  vile  rubbish  under  the  well-known  label. 
This  is  a  state  of  things,  of  course,  that  can  easily  be 
met  by  the  foreign  manufacturer,  whenever  he  is  in- 
troducing any  new  article  of  consumption,  taking  care 
to  have  it  formally  registered  in  the  Argentine  at  the 
same  time  that  it  is  placed  on  the  home  market,  so 
that  if  in  the  future  he  should  wish  to  export  it,  he 
will  be  able  freely  to  do  so. 

Owing  to  the  accessibility  of  legislators  to  influence 
and  bribery,  all  sorts  of  abuses  arise.  In  Montevideo, 
for  instance,  a  typical  case  came  under  my  personal 
knowledge.  A  large  British  manufacturing  house, 
which  for  many  years  had  been  suppyling  an  article  of 
wide  consumption  throughout  South  America  and  in 
Uruguay  particularly,  suddenly  discovered  that  an  ex- 
cessive import  tariff  had  been  placed  upon  it.  A  large 
consignment  of  the  article  in  question  arrived  in  the 
harbour  of  Montevideo  two  or  three  days  after  the 
passing  of  the  Act,  and  a  battle  royal  ensued  between 
the  representative  of  the  British  company  and  the 
Customs  officials,  who  endeavoured  to  exact  the  new 
tariff,  but  who  were  eventually  defeated  on  the  ground 


230  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

that  the  tariff  did  not  date  from  the  passing  of  the 
Act,  but  from  the  signing  of  the  same  by  the  President, 
which,  fortunately,  had  not  taken  place  until  two  or 
three  days  after  the  arrival  of  the  cargo.  This  in- 
creased tariff  had  been  imposed  solely  on  the  initiative 
of  an  ambitious  Uruguayan,  who  had  determined  to 
manufacture  a  competitive  article  locally  and  got  his 
friends  in  the  cdmara  to  assist  him  by  choking  off  the 
foreign  competitor.  The  result  was  that  the  British 
firm  had  immediately  to  buy  land  and  build  a  factory 
in  Montevideo  in  order  to  get  "  inside  the  tariff,"  which 
they  did  before  the  bungling  native  was  able  to  work 
out  his  own  plans,  and  so  completely  outwitted  him. 
The  probability  is  that  the  tariff  will  again  be  taken 
off,  and  the  British  company  will  be  able  to  make  the 
Uruguayan  consumer  pay  for  the  inconvenience  and 
expense  which  the  unsuccessful  trickery  of  their  com- 
patriot incurred. 

Before  turning  from  this  subject,  I  must  add  a  final 
word  about  the  extraordinary  incompetency  of  native 
labour,  already  mentioned,  which  conditions  to  so 
large  an  extent  the  business  life,  not  only  of  the  Ar- 
gentine, but  of  all  South  America.  Inefficiency  is 
the  keynote  of  the  Spaniard  as  a  worker.  A  complete 
indifference  to  the  pressure  of  time  is  another  of  his 
characteristics,  and  both  of  these  we  find  more  or 
less  eminent  in  the  South  American.  The  Argentine 
himself  is  steadily  escaping  from  the  influence  of  his 
Spanish  original,  and  will  eventually  become  a  more 
wide-awake,  competent,  and  altogether  a  more  intelli- 
gent worker.  But  even  so,  he  has  still  to  rid  himself  of 
innumerable  faults  in  order  to  come  into  line  with 


BAGS  OF  WHEAT  AWAITING  SHIPMENT  AT  A  RAILWAY  STATION. 


THREE  HUGE  PILES  OF  "JERKED  BEEF"  OUTSIDE  A  "SALADERO," 
OR  CURING  FACTORY. 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         231 

what  modern  industrial  conditions  exact  from  the 
worker  in  France,  Germany,  and  Italy,  in  Great 
Britain  and  in  North  America.  The  tradesman  will 
dismiss  you  with  the  blandest  assurances  of  completing 
the  work  he  has  in  hand  for  you  "  to-morrow,"  and 
probably  you  will  discover  a  week  later  he  has  not  yet 
begun  it.  He  doesn't  care  a  hang  whether  you  are 
pleased  or  not.  The  professional  man  will  make  no 
attempt  whatever  to  keep  an  engagement  within  half 
an  hour  of  the  appointed  time,  and  the  employee  does 
not  believe  that  the  interests  of  the  employer  and 
his  own  can  ever  possibly  be  identical. 

There  is  but  one  way  to  deal  with  the  Spanish- 
American  worker,  and  that  is  never  to  encourage  him, 
never  to  express  your  approval  of  his  work,  never  for 
one  moment  to  let  him  feel  you  value  his  services,  and 
never  voluntarily  to  advance  his  wages!  The  master 
who  finds  his  native  helper  really  useful  and  shows  his 
appreciation  by  doing  any  of  these  things  will  speedily 
have  to  meet  a  demand  for  an  impossible  increase  of 
wages,  or  to  suffer  the  annoyance  of  seeing  his  em- 
ployee "  slacking  "  at  every  opportunity  and  assuming 
an  attitude  of  disregard  for  his  interests.  The  man 
reasons  that  if  his  master  thinks  so  well  of  him  as  to 
advance  his  wages  without  a  request,  or  to  express  his 
satisfaction  with  his  services,  he  has  become  so  in- 
valuable to  that  master  that  he  can  presume  on  him 
by  taking  liberties  which  a  less  useful  worker  would 
not  expect  to  be  allowed.  Presently,  the  only  thing 
his  master  can  do  is  to  discharge  the  man  whom 
he  has  thoughtlessly  encouraged,  and  it  may  be  that 
the  latter  will  retaliate  by  waiting  at  the  door  and 


232  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

either  shooting  or  stabbing  the  misguided  employer. 
Especially  in  handling  the  peones  is  it  necessary  to 
maintain  the  severest,  almost  the  most  brutal  condi- 
tions of  discipline.  Among  my  acquaintances  in  the 
Argentine  is  a  wiry  little  Englishman,  whose  reputa- 
tion as  a  disciplinarian  is  so  widely  known  that  his 
services  are  much  in  request  to  "  clean  up  "  estancias 
where  unsuccessful  managers  have  allowed  slackness 
to  prevail  among  the  hands,  or  "  arms,"  rather:  agri- 
cultural labourers  being  collectively  brazos  or  braceros, 
though  the  latter  term  is  also  used  in  the  singular.  He 
looks  the  last  man  in  the  world  for  the  job,  having 
more  the  appearance  of  a  natty,  little  London  lawyer. 
But  he  was  wont  to  ride  among  the  rough  Italian 
and  Gallego  labourers,  always  complaining  about  the 
inefficiency  of  their  work,  and  if  one  ever  muttered  a 
protest,  he  calmly  smashed  him  to  the  ground  with  a 
well-directed  blow  on  the  fore-head  from  the  butt  of 
his  loaded  riding  whip.  On  various  occasions  he  has 
even  gone  so  far  as  to  have  two  peones  seize  one  of 
their  number  who  had  retorted  to  some  complaint, 
carry  him  to  a  barn  and  strip  off  his  shirt,  and  after 
having  him  tied  to  a  post,  personally  apply  a  substan- 
tial number  of  lashes  to  his  back.  It  might  be  thought 
that  this  was  just  the  type  of  man  to  receive  a  shot 
some  night,  or  a  stab  in  the  back,  but  that  is  not  the 
way  of  things  in  South  America.  He  has  gone  about 
his  business  for  nearly  thirty  years  and  has  won  the 
respect  of  the  creatures  he  has  knocked  down  and 
flogged,  as  well  as  that  of  all  the  others  who  did  not 
wish  to  feel  the  weight  of  his  strong  hand.  No,  the 
type  of  employer  more  likely  to  be  assassinated  is  he 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         233 

who  has  treated  his  employees  with  ill-directed  kind- 
ness. 

I  met  a  gentleman,  the  manager  of  an  estancia,  at 
our  hotel  in  the  middle  of  one  week  leaving  for  his 
home  and  heard  the  following  Sunday  that  he  had  been 
shot  dead  by  a  labourer  on  the  Saturday,  because  he 
would  not  re-employ  the  man  whom  the  mayordomo 
had  discharged  during  the  manager's  absence.  The 
fellow  had  no  grudge  against  the  man  who  discharged 
him,  who  was  probably  in  the  habit  of  making  his  arm 
felt  among  the  workers,  but  the  manager,  who  had 
shown  a  kindly  interest  in  the  peones  and  braceros,  and 
could,  had  he  wished,  re-engage  this  one,  was  the  nat- 
ural object  of  his  vengeance.  Another  gentleman  with 
whom  I  came  into  occasional  relationship  was  shot 
dead  one  evening  by  one  of  his  workers  because  he 
would  not  advance  him  a  day's  money,  declaring  that 
he  already  had  received  sufficient  for  the  week. 
Wages  are  paid  nominally  by  the  month,  but  improvi- 
dence is  so  common  among  the  workers  that  seldom 
has  a  man,  no  matter  his  status,  to  draw  his  full  pay 
at  the  end  of  the  month,  continual  advances  having 
been  asked  for  week  by  week. 

Therefore  any  North  American  or  European  house 
that  purposes  branching  out  in  the  Argentine  is  faced 
with  difficulties  that  do  not  exist,  at  least  to  the  same 
extent,  in  almost  any  other  great  centre  of  trade,  and 
some  allowance  must  be  made  to  discount  these  in 
loney  values  from  the  cost  of  doing  business  there. 

Blackmail  and  "  graft "  entering  so  largely  into 
business  and  politics,  it  would  be  surprising  were  it 
entirely  absent  from  the  Press.  In  proportion  to  its 


234  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

population,  Buenos  Ayres  probably  supports  more 
periodicals  than  any  other  city  in  the  world.  There 
are  about  fifteen  morning  and  evening  journals  de- 
voted to  Argentine  interests,  "national"  newspapers; 
two  dailies  which  cater  for  the  Spanish  community  in 
distinction  from  the  native  Argentine;  three  or  four 
Italian  morning  and  evening  papers;  two  English 
dailies  (one  of  which  has  a  wide  circulation  and  is 
extremely  profitable  to  its  proprietors)  ;  two  French 
dailies;  two  or  three  flourishing  German  dailies;  one 
Turkish  daily  (containing  four  pages  about  the  size 
of  a  New  York  evening  paper,  printed  in  Arabic  char- 
acters), and  weekly,  semi-weekly,  bi-weekly,  and 
monthly  publications  almost  innumerable,  catering  for 
all  manner  of  interests  and  representing  a  veritable 
babel  of  tongues  —  Yiddish,  Scandinavian,  Syriac, 
Russian,  Greek,  Catalan,  Basque,  to  mention  a  few  at 
random.  A  mere  glance  at  a  list  of  these  journals 
would  be  sufficient  to  indicate,  even  to  the  uninitiated, 
that  they  cannot  all  be  getting  an  honest  living.  Those 
that  are  conducted  on  strict  business  principles  are 
relatively  few;  the  blackmailer  is  busy  on  the  others. 
His  methods  are  simple,  nai've  to  a  degree.  The  ad- 
vertising manager  calls  upon  you  and  states  that  he 
has  seen  your  advertisement  in  La  Prensa,  La  Nation, 
La  Razon,  La  Argentina,  or  El  Diario,  all  of  which 
are  reputable  and  important  journals,  and  that  he 
would  like  you  to  put  it  into  his  paper,  and  if  you  do  not 
think  of  doing  that,  his  editor  is  contemplating  pub- 
lishing an  article  attacking  you,  and  it  would  be  a  pity 
to  let  that  appear.  They  are  foolish  indeed  who  al- 
low such  threats  to  induce  them  to  use  space  in  any  of 


BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  BUENOS  AYRES         235 

the  numberless  rags  that  issue  from  obscure  printing 
offices,  as  the  circulation  of  these  sheets  is  so  small, 
their  influence  so  contemptible,  that  it  would  scarcely 
matter  whether  they  published  a  full  page  denounce- 
ment of  a  Calle  Florida  tradesman  as  a  thief  and  a 
swindler  and  offered  their  paper  for  sale  at  his  door, 
so  little  attention  do  the  general  public  pay  to  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  an  abundance  of  good 
journalism,  and  neither  New  York  nor  London  can  pro- 
duce more  profitable  mediums  of  commercial  publicity 
than  several  of  the  daily  papers  already  named,  or  such 
weeklies  as  Caras  y  Caretas,  Fray  Mocho,  and  P.  B.  T. 
Relatively,  the  advertising  rates  in  all  these  journals 
are  higher  than  in  American  or  British  publications 
of  the  same  circulation,  but  the  ready  response  to  the 
advertisements  in  them  not  only  compensates  for  the 
difference  in  cost,  but  makes  them  work  out  cheaper 
mediums  of  publicity  than  the  average  in  North  Amer- 
ica or  Great  Britain. 

From  every  point  of  view,  the  Argentine  offers  to  v  v 
the  man  of  business  almost  unequalled  opportunities,  > 
but,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to  illustrate  in  this  chap- 
ter, it  has  the  defects  of  its  merits,  and  he  who  imagines 
it  a  veritable  gold  mine  where  there  is  no  more  to  do 
than  pick  up  the  nuggets  and  bring  them  home,  is  the 
most  deluded  of  optimists.  It  will  give  rich  return  for 
industry,  for  intelligence,  and  for  honest  merit,  but 
while  the  business  man  in  search  of  new  fields  of  en- 
terprise may  reasonably  expect  to  do  relatively  better 
in  the  wonderful  Argentine  than  in  most  other  markets 
of  the  world,  what  I  have  written  may  show  that  busi- 
ness life  in  Buenos  Ayres  is  not  entirely  a  bed  of  roses. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE    ARGENTINE    AT    HOME 

As  we  make  no  distinction  in  English  between  the  name 
of  the  country  and  that  of  its  native,  referring  to  both 
as  "  the  Argentine,"  I  am  continually  finding  little 
difficulties  present  themselves  in  the  progress  of  my 
writing,  involving  circumlocutions  which  are  obviated 
in  the  Spanish.  The  Spaniard  can  never  doubt  the 
intention  of  a  writer  about  the  Argentine,  la  Argentina 
being  the  name  of  the  country,  or  of  a  female  native, 
while  el  Argentina  indicates  the  male  native.  In  the 
English,  we  have  to  depend  entirely  on  the  context  of 
the  sentence  to  make  clear  whether  the  reference  is  to 
the  country  or  to  a  native  thereof.  In  the  present 
chapter,  of  course,  the  title  sufficiently  indicates  that 
we  are  to  look  at  the  Argentine  native  in  his  domestic 
relationships,  and  I  must  confess  the  subject  is  one 
that  does  not  admit  of  very  extensive  treatment,  for 
the  reason  set  forth  by  M.  Jules  Huret  in  one  of  his 
admirable  studies.  The  French  writer  observes  (I 
translate  from  the  Spanish  translation)  : 

Only  strangers  of  high  social  or  official  standing  are  received 
with  any  active  sympathy.  It  is  a  matter  of  pride  to  be  able 
to  make  these  visitors  realise  the  great  progress  of  the  metropo- 
lis and  to  introduce  them  to  two  or  three  salons,  which  are  all 
precisely  alike.  But  if  the  stranger,  although  he  be  of  good 
family,  arrive  at  Buenos  Ayres  provided  with  letters  of  intro- 
duction to  real  criollos  (natives  with  generations  of  Argentine 

236 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  237 

pedigree)  he  will  receive  cards  in  reply,  and  not  always  that 
courtesy;  rarely  a  word  of  friendship  or  welcome.  He  will 
hear  repeated  on  all  hands  mi  casa  es  suya  ("my  house' is 
yours");  there  will  even  be  the  usual  courtesies  with  him 
should  they  meet,  and  he  may  even  be  asked  to  go  to  the  Jqckey 
Club,  if  his  stay  in  Buenos  Ayres  is  not  to  be  a  long  one. 
With  few  exceptions,  he  will  not  be  able  to  penetrate  into  the 
intimacy  of  the  "  home  "  or  of  a  family  of  criollos.  Argentine 
family  life,  especially  of  the  better  class,  retains  many  of  the 
habits  of  the  Spaniards  and  something  of  the  customs  of 
the  Arabs. 

This  is  correctly  observed,  and  if  an  amiable  French- 
man found  such  difficulty  as  M.  Huret  evidently  experi- 
enced in  penetrating  within  the  outer  walls  of  Argen- 
tine domesticity,  how  shall  the  Anglo-Saxon  succeed 
where  a  Latin  had  to  confess  failure?  It  is  to  be 
borne  in  mind,  however,  that  this  refers  chiefly  to  the 
old  families,  who  affect  to  despise  the  motley  rabble  of 
new-comers,  and  while  profiting  enormously  by  the  in- 
dustry and  enterprise  of  the  Gringo, —  who  has  de- 
veloped and  exploited  the  riches  of  their  country,  mak- 
ing them  rich  in  the  process, —  do  not  wish  to  be  vul- 
garised by  intercourse  with  the  merely  money-making 
element  of  the  population.  The  exclusiveness  of  such 
families  is  notorious,  and  maintaining  as  they  do  the 
ancient  patriarchal  relationships,  they  are  sufficient 
unto  themselves,  so  that  any  foreigner  who  seeks  to 
:orce  himself  into  their  small  and  narrow-minded  cir- 
cle is  an  ill-advised  mortal  who  will  surely  be  snubbed 
for  his  pains.  They  are  as  truly  republican,  these 
criollos,  as  the  families  of  the  Doges  of  Venice,  but 
politically,  and  even  socially  they  are  being  over- 


238  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

whelmed  by  the  great  tide  of  commercial  prosperity  on 
which  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people  and  the  mot- 
liest  mixtures  of  nationalities  have  floated  into  wealth 
and  power.  Yet  there  is  something  austerely  attrac- 
tive in  their  dignified  isolation,  their  cold  contempt  of 
the  ruck  of  the  community.  Like  the  Creole  families 
of  Louisiana,  they  are  landmarks  of  the  past,  moulder- 
ing memorials  of  a  social  system  that  has  served  its 
day  and  is  ceasing  to  be. 

We  have  really  to  go  further  back  than  Spanish 
origins  to  trace  the  influences  that  have  moulded  the 
Argentine  criollo  into  what  we  find  him.  Just  as  it 
is  a  recognised  law  of  heredity  that  certain  character- 
istics are  apt  to  skip  one  generation  and  reappear  in 
the  next,  so  do  we  find  among  these  peoples  of  South 
America  features  that  are  more  Moorish  than  Spanish. 
In  modern  times,  while  the  Spaniards  at  home  have  been 
ridding  themselves  of  many  traces  of  the  old  Moorish 
dominion;  those  who  settled  in  their  American  colonies 
retained  customs  and  habits  of  thought  which  were 
disappearing  in  the  home  country,  and  owing  to  the 
isolated  and  circumscribed  colonial  life,  tendencies  to- 
ward exclusiveness  have  become  emphasised  to  the  point 
of  exaggeration.  Thus,  in  certain  directions,  the  dusky 
hand  of  the  Moor  is  even  more  noticeable  in  South 
America  to-day  than  in  Spain  itself.  This  is  a  point 
of  view  which  few  Argentine  writers  would  be  willing 
to  endorse,  as  it  is  the  claim  of  the  Argentine  that  his 
civilisation  is  purely  European,  though  distinctive  in 
its  individuality.  The  fact  remains,  however,  that  the 
position  of  the  womenkind,  legally  and  socially,  though 
now  showing  signs  of  rapid  change,  conforms  more  to 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  239 

Moorish  notions  than  to  European  ideals;  the  very 
arrangement  of  the  house  is  Moorish,  disguised,  it  is 
true,  by  progression  through  Spanish  and  French  styles ; 
the  tribal  dignity  of  the  head  of  the  family  is  nearer  to 
Arabic  life  than  to  anything  still  surviving  in  Euro- 
pean civilisation. 

It  will  be  at  once  obvious  to  the  reader  that  in  a 
country  where  we  find  the  very  latest  ideas  of  in- 
tellectual and  industrial  progress  warring  with  social 
conceptions  which  we  have  long  come  to  esteem  as  es- 
sentially oriental,  we  must  have  a  very  complex  and 
unfamiliar  system  of  family  life  to  consider.  Indeed, 
while  there  is  but  little  for  the  writer  to  deal  with,  who 
confines  himself  to  a  record  of  familiar  experiences, 
the  subject  is  extremely  fascinating  and  capable  of 
treatment  at  great  length.  My  present  purpose,  how- 
ever, is  to  deal  with  the  obvious,  with  "  things  seen," 
rather  than  to  attempt  in  any  detail  the  tracing  of 
origins  of  the  Argentine  social  system.  But  the  slight 
suggestion  I  have  thrown  out  will  show  the  bent  of  my 
thought  in  this  connection,  and  perhaps  help  the  reader 
to  a  better  understanding  of  what  is  to  follow. 

It  must  be  understood  that  the  foreign  resident  ac- 
tively engaged  in  business  affairs  might  not,  in  the 
whole  course  of  a  lifetime,  come  in  contact  with  any 
of  the  real  criollos.  Nor  would  it  be  matter  for  sur- 
prise if  he  seldom  or  never  encountered  a  real  Ar-' 
gentine.  Personally,  it  was  my  good  fortune  to  meet 
several  gentlemen  of  eminent  position  and  influence 
in  Buenos  Ayres  who  were  natives  of  the  countVy, 
whose  parents  in  some  instances  had  even  been  born 
there,  and  all  were  intensely  proud  to  be  Argentines. 


240  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

It  would  be  difficult,  however,  to  determine  to  what  ex- 
tent any  one  of  them,  had  England  been  the  scene  of 
their  lives,  would  have  been  regarded  as  an  Englishman. 
The  extraordinary  power  of  the  country  to  assimilate  all 
races  under  the  sun,  the  speed  with  which  even  the 
most  unpromising  material  of  immigration  seems  to 
be  transformed  into  Argentine  nationality,  presents 
one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  to  the  foreigner  in  his 
search  for  national  characteristics.  I  was  told  by  va- 
rious English  residents  that  they  had  only  been  able 
to  make  their  children  grow  up  with  the  English  tongue 
by  thrashing  them  when  they  spoke  Spanish,  and  M. 
Huret  mentions  the  typical  case  of  a  Frenchman  whose 
sons  absolutely  refused  to  learn  their  father's  language, 
and  were  proud  to  speak  only  Spanish.  He  also  tells 
how  two  sons  of  a  wealthy  German  resident  in  Ro- 
sario,  who  had  been  sent  to  a  German  University, 
while  staying  at  the  Plaza  Hotel  in  Buenos  Ayres  on 
their  return,  on  being  mistaken  for  Germans,  felt  so 
mortified  that  they  wept! 

There  are  two  immediate  reasons  for  this  fervid 
patriotism  of  the  younger  generation:  (i)  the  fact 
that  all  male  children  born  in  the  Argentine  are  re- 
garded as  Argentine  citizens  and  must  perform  their 
military  service;  and  (2)  the  perfervid  patriotism 
instilled  into  them  at  school,  where  the  national  flag 
is  exhibited  in  every  room  and  receives  the  homage  of 
a  sacred  thing. 

It  is  perfectly  understandable  that  a  young  man, 
feeling  himself  a  citizen  of  no  mean  country,  in  which 
his  father  is  no  more  than  a  foreigner  —  rarely  does 
a  Frenchman  become  officially  an  Argentine,  as  that 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  241 

involves  the  renunciation  of  his  own  nationality;  the 
Germans  are  less  squeamish  in  this  respect;  while  the 
Italians  and  Spanish  readily  nationalise  themselves  — 
will  take  a  wholesome  pride  in  his  citizenship.  And 
as  language  is  the  greatest  instrument  for  binding  a 
people  together,  and  the  predominance  of  Spanish  in 
South  America  is  unassailable,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
the  native-born  should  even  prefer  the  language  of  his 
country  to  that  of  his  father's  country.  In  the  course 
of  my  stay  I  met  quite  a  number  of  persons  bearing  the 
most  familiar  English  and  Scottish  names,  who  could 
not  even  say  "  Good  morning  "  in  English.  With  cer- 
tain of  these  I  had  frequent  transactions,  and  it  was  in- 
teresting to  study  the  racial  characteristics  of  a  gen- 
tleman named  Campbell,  a  fanatical  Argentine,  whose 
parents  two  generations  back  spoke  nothing  but  "  braid 
Scots,"  yet  whose  every  action  and  trick  of  speech  was 
peculiarly  Argentine.  Another  gentleman,  one  of  the 
most  able  and  businesslike  men  I  encountered,  boasted 
the  name  of  Harris  (pronounced  "Arrees"),  which 
was  about  the  only  English  word  he  knew.  Thus  it 
happens  there  are  unnumbered  thousands  of  Argen- 
tines without  a  single  drop  of  Spanish  blood,  but  with 
all  sorts  of  infusions  of  British,  German,  French, 
Italian,  Belgian,  Russian,  Scandinavian,  etc.  As  re- 
gards the  patriotic  teaching,  here  is  an  example  of  the 
catechism  in  daily  use  throughout  the  public  schools: 

Question.  How  do  you  esteem  yourself  in  relation  to  your 
compatriots  ? 

Answer.  I  consider  myself  bound  to  them  by  a  sentiment 
which  unites  us. 

Q.     And  what  is  that? 


242  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

A.  The  sentiment  that  the  Argentine  Republic  is  the  finest 
country  on  earth. 

Q.    What  are  the  duties  of  a  good  citizen? 
A.     First  of  all,  to  love  his  country. 
Q.     Even  before  his  parents? 
A.     Before  all. 

Afterwards,  the  scholar  responds  in  the  following 
manner  to  another  question  from  the  teacher: 

In  the  veins  of  no  human  being  ever  flowed  more  generous 
blood  than  ours;  the  origins  of  no  people  in  the  world  ever 
shone  with  a  brighter  aureole  than  that  which  illuminates  the 
brow  of  the  Argentine  Republic.  I  am  proud  of  my  origin,  of 
my  race,  and  of  my  country. 

Whenever  the  name  of  General  San  Martin  is  men- 
tioned by  the  teacher  in  a  class,  the  scholars  are  ex- 
pected to  bob  up  and  make  the  military  salute,  at  the 
same  time  saying  viva  la  pdtria!  And  very  touching  the 
extreme  gravity  of  all  classes  in  uncovering  and  their 
prayerful  homage  when  the  somewhat  bizarre  strains 
of  the  National  Anthem,  reminiscent  of  the  Marseillaise 
mixed  with  a  Sankey  hymn,  are  heard,  while  the  na- 
tional flag  borne  through  the  streets  or  exhibited  on 
an  official  occasion  involves  the  doffing  of  all  hats. 

All  this,  to  Europeans,  exaggerated  patriotism,  will 
appear  far  less  so  to  the  citizen  of  any  young  country  ^ 
and  is  not  vastly  more  pronounced  than  that  of  the 
United  States,  but  it  is  probably  necessary  to  the  fo- 
menting of  a  proper  sentiment  of  nationality.  Time 
will  adjust  the  untrue  perspective  of  the  present  day, 
which  elevates  the  most  trumpery  shooting  affairs  into 
heroic  combats  and  successful  soldiers  of  no  dazzling 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  243 

genius  with  Wellington  and  Napoleon,  if  not  with 
Julius  Caesar  and  Alexander  the  Great! 

These,  then,  are  two  very  potent  factors  in  the  mak- 
ing of  the  Argentine  patriot :  the  claiming  of  every  male 
child  born  in  the  country  as  a  national  unit  and  the  de- 
termined inculcation  of  a  vigorous  patriotism.  We 
have  to  add  to  them  the  influence  of  the  language  and 
also  that  natural  love  of  country  which  makes  the  hu- 
man being  prefer  even  the  most  forbidding  and  un- 
attractive scenes,  if  they  happen  to  be  the  first  on  which 
his  dawning  mind  has  looked.  So  strong  is  this  feel- 
ing, that  I  have  found  it  quite  impossible  to  utter  a 
single  word  in  criticism  of  Buenos  Ayres  in  the  pres- 
ence of  young  people,  the  children  of  British  subjects, 
who  had  been  born  there  and  had  never  seen  a  Euro- 
pean city.  Nay,  they  are  to  be  met  in  England,  full 
of  contempt  for  poor  old  London  and  all  things  Eng- 
lish, and  fired  with  the  most  unreasoning  love  of  their 
native  Buenos  Ayres.  Thus  in  a  country  where  "  the 
melting  pot  "  so  quickly  turns  all  that  is  thrown  therein 
into  the  same  mould,  it  is  almost  futile  to  go  searching 
for  "  the  real  Argentine,"  and  we  must  be  content  to 
attempt  no  delicate  differentiations,  but  simply  to  ac- 
cept in  the  broadest  and  loosest  way  the  Argentine  resi- 
dents as  the  Argentine  people,  excluding,  perhaps,  the 
larger  portion  of  the  British  community. 

Early  discovering  the  fact  that  there  was  no  possi- 
bility of  the  average  stranger  being  admitted  into  the 
charmed  circle  of  the  private  family,  I  turned  to  other 
methods  of  discovering  something  of  the  family  life, 
and  confess  that  I  did  not  even  despise  the  observations 
of  English  governesses,  whose  services  are  in  keen  de- 


244  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

mand  among  the  well-to-do.  Some  of  these  ladies 
might  do  the  necessary  picture  of  the  inner  life  of  the 
Argentine  family  which  no  ordinary  visitor  is  ever 
likely  to  be  able  to  draw  from  personal  observation. 
Let  me  give  one  glimpse  of  an  Argentine  interior, 
as  I  had  it  from  a  very  able  teacher  of  languages  — 
an  English  lady  who  had  spent  a  number  of  years 
in  the  homes  of  different  families.  Unlike  most  Ar- 
gentine families,  this  was  self-contained,  the  father  and 
mother  with  their  brood  of  young  children,  and  a  con- 
siderable retinue  of  servants,  occupying  an  immense 
house  in  the  fashionable  district,  with  no  other  relatives 
sharing  it.  The  gentleman  derived  a  large  income 
from  his  estates  and  was  above  the  need  to  do  more 
than  draw  his  money  periodically  from  the  agents  into 
whose  hands  he  had  placed  their  management.  The 
wife,  still  under  thirty,  was  the  mother  of  some  eight 
or  nine  children,  and  she  had  already  attained  to  that 
condition  of  adipose  tissue  which  is  the  ambition  of 
every  respectable  Argentine  lady.  Her  mornings  were 
spent  in  aimless  lolling  about  the  house  in  a  state  of  un- 
dress, her  toilet  being  a  matter  for  the  afternoon,  when 
she  went  for  a  short  run  in  their  big  limousine,  or 
visited  some  lady  friends  to  take  afternoon  tea.  In 
the  evenings,  she  had  her  children  with  her  until  a  com- 
paratively late  hour,  her  husband  spending  almost 
every  evening  at  his  club,  and  he  too  would  attend  to 
his  toilet  in  the  afternoon,  thinking  nothing  of  sitting 
down  to  lunch  in  his  shirt-sleeves  with  his  suspenders 
hanging  from  the  back  of  his  trousers,  while  his  wife 
would  be  in  her  dressing  gown.  The  children  wen 
not  admitted  to  meals,  but  took  their  food  with  thi 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  245 

governess  and  one  or  two  nurses  in  a  special  dining- 
room,  into  which  papa  would  occasionally  wander  at 
meal  time,  still  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  and  help  himself 
to  scraps  from  the  dishes  on  the  table  or  perhaps  a 
spoonful  of  soup  from  the  tureen !  This  the  governess 
found  somewhat  trying  in  her  efforts  to  instil  manners 
into  the  children,  whose  conduct  at  table  was  deplor- 
able. Once  when  one  of  the  elder  girls  was  picking 
the  bread  on  the  governess's  plate,  that  much-tried 
lady  explained  to  her  gently  that  such  was  not  con- 
sidered good  manners,  to  which  the  bright  young  girl 
replied:  "  In  England,  yes;  but  here,  no." 

To  keep  these  lively  youngsters  from  all  sorts  of 
monkeyisms,  such  as  licking  the  dividing  spoon,  putting 
their  knives, into  their  mouths,  and  making  as  much 
noise  over  a  plate  of  soup  as  one  does  in  a  bath,  left 
the  governess  scant  time  to  enjoy  her  meals,  and  such 
manners  among  children  are  not  altogether  exceptional 
in  Argentine  homes.  Young  people  are  pampered  to 
a  dangerous  degree,  and  while  still  mere  children  they 
have  more  pocket  money  to  dispose  of  on  their  own 
little  selfish  pleasures  than  many  a  well-to-do  English- 
man spends  on  himself. 

Although  there  is  great  and  growing  popularity  for 
all  forms  of  English  sport,  and  especially  football,  the 
boys  of  the  moneyed  classes  are  usually  somewhat  ef- 
feminate in  their  manners.  Those  of  the  household 
above  mentioned  who  were  old  enough  to  go  to  school 
were  taken  there,  a  distance  of  about  a  quarter  of  a 
mile,  under  care  of  a  nurse  or  the  governess,  in  one  of 
the  various  motor  cars  owned  by  the  father,  and  at  the 
hour  of  dismissal  each  day  they  were  brought  home  in 


246  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  same  manner.  I  used  to  think  it  quite  one  of  the 
characteristic  sights  of  Buenos  Ayres  to  notice  the 
groups  of  nurses  and  governesses  at  the  doors  of  the 
better-class  schools,  waiting  to  receive  their  little 
charges  and  conduct  them  as  far  as  two  or  three  squares 
away  by  electric  tram,  when  the  parents  could  not  af- 
ford to  send  a  motor  or  a  horse-carriage  for  that  pur- 
pose. Many  of  these  helpless  boys  would  be  twelve 
years  old!  This  is  understandable  in  the  case  of  the 
girls,  nay  imperative,  but  it  tends  to  make  the  boys 
timorous  and  unmanly,  afraid  even  to  cross  the  street 
alone.  In  view  of  the  universal  pampering  of  the  chil- 
dren, it  speaks  highly  for  the  essential  virility  of  Ar- 
gentine character  that  the  youth  of  the  country  cannot, 
as  a  whole,  be  said  to  lack  in  manliness;  they  seem  to 
throw  off  in  adolescence  the  effeminacy  which  their 
boyhood  training  is  admirably  adapted  to  foster  in 
them. 

Of  familiar  domestic  intercourse,  such  as  the  social 
relationships  of  British  and  North  American  home- 
life  make  possible,  there  is  absolutely  none  in  the  Ar- 
gentine, or,  indeed,  throughout  the  whole  of  South 
America  —  excepting  always  those  families  in  which 
Anglo-Saxon  influence  predominates.  The  drawing- 
room  of  most  of  the  better-class  houses  is  a  gorgeously 
furnished  chamber,  in  which  the  furniture,  on  most 
days  of  the  year,  is  hidden  under  dust  covers,  and 
where  the  blinds  are  seldom  raised.  It  exists  for  state 
occasions  only,  when  the  starchiest  formality  is  ob- 
served, and  these  are  by  no  means  numerous  and  always 
duly  announced  in  the  social  column  of  the  daily  pa- 
pers. The  lady  of  the  house  passes  most  of  her  time 


;THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOMEV         247 

between  her  bedroom  and  her  boudoir,  and  it  is  in  the 
latter,  if  she  cultivate  a  circle  of  lady  friends,  that  she 
will  sip  afternoon  tea  with  her  callers,  although  you  will 
occasionally  come  across  an  announcement  in  the  social 
news  stating  that  some  lady  is  going  to  give  a  "  five 
o'clock  tea  room  "  at  four  o'clock,  and  inviting  her 
acquaintances  to  be  present.  There  is  a  great  par- 
tiality for  the  use  of  English  phrases,  and  "  five  o'clock 
tea,"  together  with  the  addition  of  "  room,"  is  often 
used  without  any  clear  understanding  of  its  meaning. 

But  the  Argentine  mother,  although  her  ways  are  not 
our  ways,  might  in  certain  respects  serve  as  an  exam- 
ple to  English  and  American  mothers;  entering  not  in 
the  slightest  degree  into  any  of  her  husband's  concerns 
that  lie  outside  of  their  home,  her  devotion  is  entirely 
to  her  children,  who  will  in  large  measure  reflect  her 
standard  of  culture,  and  when  the  lady  of  the  house  has 
had  a  European  training,  there  will  be  nothing  lacking 
in  the  behaviour  of  her  children. 

This  bond  between  the  mother  and  children  is  very 
strong,  reaching  out  through  all  the  living  generations, 
so  that  even  a  great-grandmother  —  and  there  are 
many,  as  the  women  marry  young,  grandmothers  of 
forty  being  not  uncommon  —  enters  very  intimately 
into  the  lives  of  all  her  progeny,  who  vie  with  each 
other  in  their  love  for  her.  The  community  of  feel- 
ing between  all  members  and  branches  of  the  family  is 
most  pronounced.  The  importance  of  this  in  knitting 
together  the  fabric  of  Argentine  society  cannot  be  over- 
estimated. 

Unlike  the  French  housewife,  the  Argentine  lady 
does  not  greatly  concern  herself  about  the  finances  of 


248  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  household,  merely  giving  directions  for  the  expen- 
diture, but  usually  leaving  it  to  her  husband  to  settle 
the  accounts.  In  this  she  shows  something  of  the 
"  grand  lady  "  and  also  something  of  the  lady  of  the 
harem,  acknowledging  that  it  is  no  part  of  a  woman's 
business  to  understand  the  value  of  money.  Her  con- 
ception of  her  office  is  to  be  pleasing  and  attractive  to 
her  husband  and  devoted  to  her  children,  in  which 
duties  she  finds  her  full  content.  The  very  formality 
of  her  name  indicates  how  far  the  Argentine  lady  is 
removed  from  the  possibilities  of  Pankhurstism.  She 
is  proud  to  be  known  as  Senora  Maria  Martinez  de 
Fuentes,  thus  indicating  that  she  is  Maria  Martinez  of 
Fuentes,  the  latter  being  her  husband's  name.  It  is  an 
admission  of  husband's  rights  which  could  not  exist  in 
a  country  of  self-assertive  womenkind. 

By  the  way,  it  may  be  interesting  here  to  explain  the 
peculiar  customs  that  regulate  family  names  in  South 
America,  and  lead  to  continuous  mistakes  on  the  part 
of  Englishmen  and  Americans,  who  have  not  taken  the 
trouble  to  familiarise  themselves  with  them.  I  have 
just  explained  that  when  a  lady  marries  she  retains  her 
maiden  name  and  adds  to  it,  with  the  preposition  de, 
the  name  of  her  husband.  Almost  certainly,  however, 
her  husband  would  have  two  family  names;  the  pa- 
ternal and  maternal.  Let  us  suppose  his  name  was 
Fuentes  Mattos,  the  first  his  father's  family  name  and 
the  second  his  mother's  family  name.  His  wife,  in 
adding  his  name  to  hers,  ignores  his  mother's  name, 
which  is  of  secondary  importance,  and  in  many  cases 
is  entirely  dropped.  On  the  other  hand,  the  children 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  249 

of  this  imaginary  couple  would  be  named  Fuentes 
Martinez,  thus  indicating  that  the  father  was  a  Fuen- 
tes and  the  mother  a  Martinez,  so  that  we  have  the  fol- 
lowing varieties  of  nomenclature  in  one  family: 

Father:     Jose  Fuentes  Mattos. 
Mother:     Maria  Martinez  de  Fuentes. 
Son:     Alfonso  Fuentes  Martinez. 

When  we  remember  that  the  names  of  the  grand- 
parents and  the  grandchildren  will  all  pass  through  sim- 
ilar changes,  it  will  be  seen  how  complicated  South 
American  family  names  may  become.  Still,  always 
bearing  in  mind  the  simple  rules  I  have  illustrated, 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  identification,  and  relationships 
can  be  much  more  clearly  established  than  with  our 
cruder  system. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  the  Argentine,  due  to  admi- 
ration of  British  brevity,  to  ignore  the  maternal  name 
entirely,  whereas  on  the  Pacific  coast  it  is  the  universal 
practice  to  use  only  the  initial,  so  that  Senor  Jose 
Fuentes  Mattos  would  there  be  expected  to  sign  him- 
self Jose  Fuentes  M.  As  it  is,  in  the  Argentine  a  man 
will  sometimes  write  his  name  in  full  and  at  other  times 
use  only  the  initial  for  the  maternal  name,  or  drop  it 
entirely;  but  for  Senor  Jose  Fuentes  Mattos  to  receive 
a  letter  from  England  addressed  Senor  J.  F.  Mattos 
is  an  insult  he  does  not  readily  forgive.  Naturally, 
that  is  what  happens  daily  in  business  correspondence 
between  North  and  South  America,  and  I  well  remem- 
ber a  traveller  for  an  American  firm  coming  to  me  to 
solve  the  difficulties  of  a  long  list  of  names  he  had  re- 


250  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ceived  from  his  head  office,  in  every  one  of  which  the 
surname  was  represented  by  an  initial  and  the  maternal 
name  written  in  full. 

Returning  to  the  Argentine  at  home,  we  have  to  con- 
sider for  a  moment  that  patriarchal  system  ofjivinj 
to  which  I  have  already  made  reference  as  one  of  the 
legacies  of  the  remote  past.  Formerly  universal  in 
Spain,  had  it  not  existed  in  the  mother  country  before 
the  colonising  days,  it  would  almost  certainly  have 
been  forced  upon  the  colonial  pioneers.  For  protec- 
tion against  the  marauding  Indians,  the  colonists,  even 
for  many  years  after  gaining  their  national  indepen- 
dence in  1810,  had  to  maintain  themselves  in  closely 
banded  communities.  Even  so  recently  as  the  year 
1860,  the  now  thriving  city  and  port  of  Bahia  Blanca, 
which  may  yet  rival  Buenos  Ayres  as  a  great  centre  of 
shipping,  was  no  more  than  a  military  outpost  to  keep 
the  Indians  from  penetrating  too  near  the  townships  in 
the  province  of  Buenos  Ayres.  Thus  we  might  have 
attributed  to  the  influence  of  environment  the  system  of 
one  family  with  all  its  connections,  interested  in  the 
work  of  a  large  estancia,  as  extensive,  perhaps,  as  an 
English  county,  living  together  under  the  one  paternal 
roof,  did  we  not  know  that  it  has  a  remoter  origin. 
Now  that  the  conditions  which  justified  it  have  entirely 
passed  away,  its  true  origin  is  not  only  forgotten,  but 
would  probably  be  denied  by  those  who  observe  the 
custom,  which  survives  in  the  very  heart  of  the  metrop- 
olis, and  among  the  best  families  of  the  land.  I  re- 
member well  how  impressed  we  were  with  some  of  the 
private  palaces  in  Buenos  Ayres,  many  of  which  rival 
in  size  and  architectural  ostentation  the  great  public 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  251 

buildings.  It  was  a  matter  for  wonder  how  any  or- 
dinary family  could  tenant  a  house  large  enough  to 
serve  as  the  town  hall  of  an  important  city.  But  all 
was  made  clear  when  we  knew  that  in  many  of  these 
private  palaces  there  was  not  merely  one  solitary  fam- 
ily nestling  away  in  some  corner  of  the  huge  building, 
but  probably  anything  from  six  to  a  dozen  related  fam- 
ilies, living  under  one  roof,  so  that  I  used  to  think  of 
the  head  of  the  family  in  Gilbertian  rhyme,  abiding  in 
peace,  not  only  with  wife  and  children,  but  with 

His  sisters  and  his  cousins, 
Whom  he  reckons  up  by  dozens, 
And  his  aunts! 

To  Britishers  especially,  it  is  a  surprising  fact  that 
there  are  brethren  in  the  world  who  can  dwell  together 
in  harmony,  to  whom  propinquity  does  not  lead  to 
family  bickerings.  That  would  be  notoriously  impos- 
sible in  Great  Britain,  and  I  suspect  equally  so  among 
the  Anglo-Saxons  of  America.  Our  nature  prompts  to 
the  independent  life  and  an  early  good-bye  to  the  pa- 
rental roof.  Surely,  then,  there  must  be  something 
radically  different  in  the  Argentine  character  which  can 
enable  halt  a  dozen  or  more  interrelated  families  to  live 
ha rmompusly ~f TT~ the- sainerrtaluseT  Ut  course,  each 
family  unit  has  its  own  particular  quarters,  and  in  some 
of  the  more  stately  residences  each  family  is  really  self- 
contained  as  to  its  house  accommodation,  but  more 
usually  they  will  have  common  dining-rooms  and  sit- 
ting-rooms, the  women  folk  passing  practically  all  their 
time  in  each  other's  company.  As  a  people  they  must 
either  be  abnormally  good-natured,  family  affection 


252  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

must  be  developed  beyond  anything  familiar  among  us, 
or  their  racial  inclination  to  indolence  makes  them  so 
tolerant  of  one  another  that  they  do  not  have  the  spirit 
to  quarrel.  I  suspect  that  something  of  all  three,  in- 
teracting on  their  lives,  makes  possible  the  existence  of 
this  unusual  condition  of  happy  family  life. 

The  system  is  one  that  has  much  to  be  said  for  it, 
and  fostering,  as  it  does,  an  intense  feeling  of  family 
pride,  which  is  reflected  in  the  patriotism  of  the  coun- 
try, it  must  be  regarded  as  a  valuable  asset  of  national 
character.  If  it  happens  that  any  member  of  the  com- 
posite family  meets  with  misfortune,  he  can  be  sure  of 
the  immediate  sympathy  and  practical  help  of  his  rel- 
atives within  the  domestic  circle,  for  they  would  deem 
it  an  indignity  that  one  of  their  family  should  be  known 
to  be  in  difficulties.  If  one  of  the  married  sons  dies, 
leaving  a  widow  with  several  children,  there  will  never 
be  a  moment's  doubt  as  to  what  the  widow  will  do. 
She  will  continue  in  precisely  the  same  position  within 
the  family,  and  even  if  her  husband  has  left  no  money 
at  all,  his  brothers  will  consider  it  their  bounden  duty 
to  maintain  her  and  her  children  in  the  same  comfort 
as  her  husband  would  have  done.  Nor  is  there  any 
charity  in  this,  as  there  would  be  with  us.  It  is  a  natu- 
ral concomitant  of  the  family  system.  What  we 
should  consider  generosity,  the  Argentine  brother-in- 
law  regards  as  a  simple  duty,  and  there  is  hardly  a  limit 
to  what  he  will  do  in  the  shape  of  service  to  the  family 
of  his  dead  brother. 

In  this  connection,  I  recall  a  very  interesting  illustra- 
tion of  the  racial  differences  between  Argentine  and 
English.  An  English  settler  in  Buenos  Ayres  had  five 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  253 

daughters  born  there,  four  of  whom  married  British 
residents  or  the  children  of  British  residents.  The  one 
exception  married  an  Argentine  gentleman,  and  so  nar- 
rowly British  were  her  relatives  that  at  first  they  looked 
with  disfavour  on  the  match.  After  some  years,  the 
English  husband  of  one  of  the  daughters  died,  leaving 
her  with  four  children  and  an  empty  purse,  having 
wasted  all  his  wife's  patrimony  in  foolish  speculation  — 
there  is  no  Married  Women's  Property  Act,  the  hus- 
band becoming  sole  arbiter  of  his  wife's  fortune !  Her 
English  brothers-in-law  and  her  own  sisters  were  more 
or  less  sympathetic,  but  the  despised  Argentine  broth- 
er-in-law immediately  made  a  home  for  her  and  her 
children  with  his  own  family,  and,  as  one  of  her  rela- 
tives told  me,  seemed  to  think  he  was  only  doing  his 
bare  duty.  This  is  a  very  pleasant  trait  of  character, 
and  from  all  that  I  was  able  to  gather  it  is  entirely 
characteristic  of  the  better-class  Argentine.  Cer- 
tainly, wherever  I  found  that  British  women  had  mar- 
ried natives,  they  had  good  reason  for  happiness,  and 
too  often  were  able  to  commiserate  with  their  own  sis- 
ters and  women  friends  who  had  married  Englishmen. 
Another  noteworthy  resultant  of  the  strength  of  the 
family  bond  is  its  influence  for  good  on  the  men.  In  a 
country  where,  thanks  to  the  cosmopolitan  rabble  of 
rogues  and  tricksters  who  swarm  in  every  quarter,  dis- 
honesty abounds  in  all  its  guises,  the  temptations  to 
most  men  are  greater  than  in  the  older  and  more  firmly 
established  countries  of  the  world.  Pride  of  family 
very  often  keeps  a  man  in  the  straight  path.  It  is  a 
little  reminiscent  of  the  ancient  system  of  the  Japanese, 
which  involved  the  entire  family  in  the  disgrace  and 


254  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

punishment  of  any  one  member  who  transgressed  the 
laws  of  honour.  The  strongest  deterrent  to  one 
tempted  towards  a  wrong  course  is  not  what  the  com- 
munity at  large  will  think  of  him,  but  how  his  action 
will  embarrass  and  humiliate  his  whole  family.  And 
when  a  member  of  one  of  these  composite  family  cir- 
cles is  guilty  of  embezzlement  or  any  misdeed  which 
can  be  rectified  by  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  others,  the 
matter  seldom  reaches  the  public;  his  father  and  his 
brothers  and  other  relatives  willingly  make  good  his 
defalcations.  Quite  a  number  of  cases  of  this  kind 
came  to  my  personal  knowledge,  and  I  believe  it  is  a 
fact  that  the  law  has  seldom  to  be  appealed  to  when 
any  one  has  suffered  a  loss  through  an  employee,  or  a 
partner  who  is  "  well  connected."  For  this  reason, 
astute  business  men  are  always  careful  to  inquire  into 
the  family  connections  of  any  person  with  whom  they 
purpose  having  transactions,  these  connections  being 
their  best  guarantee.  It  will  usually  be  found  that  the 
most  barefaced  swindlers  are  either  foreigners,  or  of 
foreign  parentage,  and  not  seldom  have  they  a  good 
deal  of  British  blood  in  their  veins. 

As  to  the  "  homes  "  of  the  Argentine,  they  approach 
more  nearly  Anglo-Saxon  ideas  of  "  comfort  "  than  the 
French,  Spanish,  or  Italian  notions  of  "  home." 
French  styles  of  furniture  and  interior  decoration  still 
predominate.  There  is,  however,  a  growing  appreci- 
ation of  the  more  solid  comfort  of  English  styles,  and 
popularity  for  these  is  assured.  Our  capacious  easy 
chairs  are  ousting  the  dainty,  elegant  and  abominably 
unrestful  French  affairs.  Little  progress,  however, 
has  been  made  in  the  direction  of  heating  the  houses, 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  255 

and  an  Argentine  interior  in  winter,  as  I  have  said  in 
an  earlier  chapter,  is  apt  to  be  a  picture  of  shivering 
cheerlessness.  But  there  are  signs  that  even  this  will 
be  remedied  in  the  increasing  approval  of  what  may 
be  described  as  "  English  comfort." 

That  the  Argentine's  home  is  likely,  however,  to  be 
thrown  open  to  the  freedom  of  the  North  American 
home  is  inconceivable.  His  exclusiveness  is  a  heritage 
of  the  past.  He  could  not  rid  himself  of  it,  even 
though  he  tried.  Nor  is  he  trying  very  hard.  He 
may  in  time  come  to  follow  European  customs  in  the 
ordering  of  his  meals,  which  still  remain,  in  real  Ar- 
gentine homes,  a  topsy-turvy  wonder  to  the  European, 
the  soup  usually  appearing  about  the  end  of  the  dinner, 
and  the  cheese  being  eaten  indiscriminately  between  the 
earlier  courses.  This  is  no  more  than  a  fashion,  but 
the  other  matter  is  "  bred  in  the  bone." 

Knowing  this,  it  seems  quaint  to  receive  from  a  na- 
tive a  letter  on  some  ordinary  affair  of  business,  bear- 
ing his  home  address  with  the  initials  "  s.c."  or  "s.c.u." 
appended.  Here  we  have  an  old  Spanish  formal- 
ity, and  one  of  the  emptiest  of  courtesies.  The 
initials  stand  for  su  casa  de  usted,  meaning  "  Your 
house."  That  is  to  say,  he  informs  you  his  house  is 
your  house!  But  he  has  no  more  intention  of  ever 
asking  you  to  enter  his  house  than  you  have  of  going 
there  to  stay.  It  reminds  one  of  Mark  Twain  on  his 
travels  in  Spain,  when  expressing  admiration  for  a 
Spaniard's  jacket,  the  owner  retorted,  "  It  is  yours, 
sir,"  and  further  assured  him  when  he  also  admired 
his  beautiful  waistcoat  that  it  also  was  at  his  disposal, 
so  that  Mark,  out  of  consideration  of  the  Spaniard's 


256  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

convenience,  refrained  from  admiring  anything  else  he 
wore.  This  is  a  custom  of  very  primitive  peoples,  and 
I  am  told  that  something  similar  obtains  among  the 
Maoris  of  New  Zealand,  one  of  whose  chiefs  pressed 
upon  King  George,  when,  as  Prince  of  Wales,  he  vis- 
ited the  colony,  the  acceptance  of  some  venerated  ob- 
ject, and  was  greatly  chagrined  by  the  royal  visitor,  in 
all  innocence  and  wishing  not  to  offend  the  chief,  ac- 
cepting the  quite  useless  gift.  We  must  never  take 
Spanish  courtesy  literally,  and  we  must  remember  in 
South  America  that  their  courtesy  is  one  of  the  things 
they  have  imported  from  Spain. 

Among  the  minor  characteristics  of  the  Argentine 
which  frequently  interested  me  and  for  which  I  en- 
deavoured to  find  a  reason,  was  the  habit  of  repeating 
the  most  ordinary  phrases  in  much  the  manner  of  a 
doddering  old  person  reiterating  the  same  story.  Let 
me  try  to  express  this  in  English.  A  lady  is  telling 
how  she  narrowly  escaped  being  run  down  by  a  tram  in 
the  street: 

It  would  be  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  when  I 
was  going  down  Calle  Sarmiento.  There  was  a  lot  of  traffic 
in  the  street,  and  without  looking  backwards  I  stepped  off  the 
pavement.  Just  as  I  stepped  off  the  pavement,  I  heard  the 
bell  of  a  tram,  and  looking  back,  it  had  nearly  reached  me,  so 
I  gave  a  scream  and  stepped  back  on  the  pavement,  just  as  the 
tram  passed  me,  in  the  Calle  Sarmiento,  at  about  four  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  when  it  was  very  crowded  and  I  had  onh 
just  stepped  off  the  pavement,  when  I  heard  the  bell,  and  h; 
only  time  to  step  back  when  the  tram  passed  me.  If  I  hadn't 
heard  the  bell,  I  might  have  been  run  over,  and  I  gave  a  sere 
just  as  I  stepped  back  on  the  pavement. 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOME  257 

That  is  no  burlesque  version  of  how  this  most  thrill- 
ing story  would  be  told.  Then,  suppose  you  have  to 
arrange  with  one  of  your  native  employees  to  purchase  a 
box  of  purple  carbon  paper  and  three  shorthand  note- 
books on  his  way  to  the  office  to-morrow  morning. 
You  will  tell  him  so,  and  expect  that  to  be  an  end  of 
the  matter — when  you  are  fresh  to  Buenos  Ayres. 
But  no,  after  listening  attentively  to  your  elaborate  in- 
structions, he  will  then  repeat: 

So,  when  I  am  coming  in  to-morrow  morning,  I  will  go  to 
the  stationer's,  and  I  will  get  a  box  of  purple  carbon  paper 
and  three  shorthand  note-books  —  a  box  of  carbon  paper,  pur- 
ple, and  shorthand  note-books,  three,  to-morrow  morning  on 
my  way  into  the  office.  Three  note-books  and  a  box  of  purple 
carbon  paper.  Bueno! 

This  most  tantalising  habit  of  trivial  repetition  is  uni- 
versal, and  so  endemic  that  English-born  residents 
speaking  both  languages  translate  this  mode  of  thought 
into  the  English  tongue,  with  the  quaintest  results. 
There  is  surely  no  people  in  the  world  who  can  take  a 
longer  time  to  explain  a  little  matter  than  the  South 
American,  and  I  have  often  thought  that  the  volume 
of  the  Spanish  language,  which  frequently  calls  for 
three  or  four  times  the  number  of  words  that  would  be 
used  in  English  to  express  a  simple  idea,  must  have  had 
some  influence  in  producing  this  strange  habit  of  repe- 
tition, in  order  to  fix  in  the  mind  precisely  what  is 
wanted  and  the  condition  under  which  it  is  to  be  se- 
cured. The  only  satisfactory  method  of  conveying 
ideas  from  mind  to  mind  was  to  assume  that  the  person 
you  were  addressing  was  still  under  fifteen  years  of 


258  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

age.  The  swift  exchange  of  thought  flashes  which  is 
possible  between  Anglo-Saxons  is  unknown  to  users  of 
the  Spanish  tongue,  but  the  more  go-ahead  Argentine, 
who  really  represents  to-day  the  brightest  intelligence 
that  expresses  itself  in  Spanish,  is  deliberately  aiming 
at  the  Anglo-Saxon  ideal,  and,  disregarding  the  cir- 
cumlocutions of  his  native  speech,  is  endeavouring  to 
bend  that  to  the  brisker  uses  of  modern  commercial 
life.  This  theory  of  mine  may  be  entirely  wrong,  but 
the  facts,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to  illustrate  them 
above,  are  substantially  correct. 

If  anything  is  likely  to  seduce  the  Argentine  away 
from  his  oldest  and  most  honoured  customs  of  life,  it 
is  the  spirit  of  emulation  which  pervades  the  whole 
social  system,  though  it  is  present  to  a  much  greater 
degree  in  those  of  mixed  parentage  than  in  the  criollos. 
By  no  means  peculiar  to  the  Argentine,  it  attains  to 
almost  equal  strength  in  the  United  States,  nor  is  it  at 
all  uncommon  in  English  society.  Social  rivalry  is 
really  the  motive  force  behind  much  of  the  commercial 
activity  of  the  country.  The  family  of  Sanchez  have 
just  built  a  swagger  new  house  and  bought  a  25  horse- 
power limousine.  The  Alonso  family,  having  quite  as 
much  money  and  perhaps  a  trifle  more  than  the  San- 
chez, cannot  brook  this  ostentation  to  pass  without  re- 
ply, so  up  goes  a  still  more  florid  mansion,  a  40  horse- 
power car  is  bought,  and  the  chauffeur  wears  a  dozen 
more  brass  buttons.  This  game  of  "  Beggar  my 
Neighbour  "  in  social  ostentation  is  being  played  mer? 
rily  through  every  grade  of  Argentine  society.  It  is 
extremely  good  for  business.  Not  only  does  it  create 
a  brisk  demand  for  luxuries,  but  it  lays  upon  those  who 


THE  ARGENTINE  AT  HOMI  259 

play  it  the  necessity  of  energising  to  secure  the  where- 
withal, and  is  thus  productive  of  creative  effort  in  the 
making  of  wealth  where  formerly  the  impetus  was 
lacking.  So  that  perhaps  it  might  not  be  wrong  to 
suppose  that  what  the  European  observer  would  write 
down  in  the  one  case  as  the  vulgar  striving  of  social 
"  climbers,"  and  as  rotten  economics  in  the  other,  is 
economically  good  in  the  development  of  a  young  coun- 
try. But  it  is  imitative  and  nothing  else,  for  there  is  as 
yet  no  evidence  of  the  growth  of  a  distinctively  national 
taste,  and  this  imitative  tendency  of  the  people  is  des- 
tined to  bring  them  steadly  nearer  to  European  ideas, 
so  that  they  will  probably  emerge  with  a  social  system 
that  will  bear  the  same  relationship  to  that  of  all  the 
European  nations  as  a  composite  photograph  does  to 
all  the  portraits  that  have  been  overlaid  on  the  nega- 
tive. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

"  THE    BRITISH    COLONY  "    AND   ITS    WAYS 

ALL  the  different  nationalities  represented  in  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  Argentine  are  known  as  u  colonies," 
excepting  the  Spaniards  and  Italians,  who  are  at  once 
so  numerous  and  so  involved  in  the  life  of  the  country 
that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  think  of  them  merely  as 
colonial  groups.  The  Republic,  with  a  total  population 
of  seven  and  a  half-millions,  contains  vast  numbers  of 
Italians  and  Spaniards,  but  reliable  returns  as  to  the 
various  nationalities  included  in  the  population  are  dif- 
ficult to  come  by,  if  not  impossible  to  secure.  It  is 
stated  that  there  are  upwards  of  800,000  Spaniards  in 
the  country  j  while  the  Basques,  both  French  and  Span- 
ish, are  said  to  exceed  a  quarter  of  a  million;  the  Ger- 
mans number  nearly  50,000,  the  total  of  German 
speaking  persons,  which  includes  Germans,  Austrians, 
and  Swiss,  being  upwards  of  120,000.  The  British 
residents  throughout  the  Republic  probably  do  not  total 
40,000,  but  that  is  thought  a  fair  estimate.  As  for 
Italians,  their  name  is  legion.  In  Buenos  Ayres  alone 
there  are  some  350,000  of  them.  But  all  figures  must 
be  regarded  as  approximate  only,  as  the  re-emigration 
movement  is  considerable.  For  example:  in  the  year 
1911  the  total  immigration  into  the  Republic  was  225,- 
772,  but  the  emigration  from  it  amounted  to  120,709, 
leaving  an  immigration  balance  of  105,063.  Race 
statistics  are  easily  obtained  as  to  the  incoming  popu- 

260 


'THE  BRITISH  COLONY"  AND  ITS  WAYS      261 

lation?  but  of  the  settled  residents  and  those  who  leave 
the  country,  there  is  a  good  deal  that  is  speculative  in 
all  estimates,  official  and  otherwise. 

The  Spaniards  and  Italians  are  split  up  into  many 
subsections,  such  as  the  Basques,  Asturians,  Andalusi- 
ans,  Neapolitans,  Tuscans,  Lombards,  Sicilians,  and  so 
forth.  It  would  thus  be  correct  to  talk  of  "  the  As- 
turian  colony,"  but  scarcely  so  of  "  the  Spanish  col- 
ony ";  of  the  Neapolitan  colony,  but  not  of  the  Italian. 

To  a  remarkable  degree  do  these  communities  pre- 
serve their  racial  distinctions,  as  I  have  already  ex- 
plained, this  applying  more  particularly  to  the  cosmo- 
politan centres  of  population,  such  as  Buenos  Ayres, 
Rosario,  La  Plata,  and  Mendoza.  In  the  smaller 
country  towns,  where  the  nationalities  thin  out,  there 
are  not  the  same  inducements  to  maintain  distinctions 
of  race ;  thus,  paradoxical  though  it  may  seem,  the  proc- 
ess of  "  Argentinising "  the  Gringo  proceeds  apace 
more  rapidly  in  the  Camp  than  in  the  larger  towns,  or 
even  in  Buenos  Ayres,  which  might  be  thought  the  hot- 
test part  of  the  "  melting  pot." 

Naturally,  the  capjtal^ contains  the  major  portion  of 
the  British^colony,  yet,  not  even  the  ubiquitous  Italian, 
though  always^overwhelming  the  British  in  sheer  num- 
bers, finds  his  way  to  remoter  parts,  for  everywhere 
throughout  the  vast  territory  of  the  Republic  the  Brit- 
ish have  penetrated,  either  as  lonely  overseers  or  "  con- 
struction engineers,"  in  little  groups  as  prosperous 
estancieros,  or  managers  of  divers  concerns.  In  Ro- 
sario there  is  a  very  considerable  colony  of  them,  in 
Bahia  Blanca,  in  Junin,  Mendoza,  Tucuman  —  wher- 
ever there  are  banks  to  be  managed,  railways  to  be 


262  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

maintained,  machinery  to  be  sold,  there  you  will  find 
the  enterprising  sons  of  Albion  busy,  and  usually  pros- 
perous; though  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  figure  I 
have  just  used  may  not  quite  apply,  as  the  most  famil- 
iar names  borne  by  these  self-exiles  from  Britain  are 
Scots  and  Irish. 

In  many  respects,  the  Irish  Argentine  was  one  of  my 
most  interesting  studies.  As  a  journalist,  it  was  some- 
thing of  a  revelation  to  find  two  comparatively  pros- 
perous weekly  newspapers,  the  Southern  Cross  and  the 
Hiberno- Argentine  Review,  both  printed  in  English 
and  very,  much  alive,  dedicated  exclusively  to  the  inter- 
ests of  the  Irish  Catholic  families  of  the  country.  The 
Irishman  is  well-known  for  the  part  he  has  played  in 
the  development  of  South  America.  In  that  wonder- 
ful statesman  and  governor,  Ambrosio  O'Higgins,  and 
his  no  less  brilliant  son  Bernardo,  the  liberator  and  first 
President  of  Chili,  did  not  Ould  Ireland  give  to  South 
America  two  of  the  noblest  men  of  action  whose  lives 
illumine  its  history?  In  the  Argentine  also,  the  Hi- 
bernian has  played  no  mean  role  in  the  development  of 
the  young  nation.  His  influence  in  her  counsels  to-day 
is  considerable.  Prepared  as  one  may  be  by  previous 
reading  to  discover  him  prominent  in  its  life,  it  is  none 
the  less  strange  to  meet  eminent  men  of  business,  in 
every  fibre  of  their  being  fervid  Argentines, — using  the 
Argentine  tongue  with  all  the  nuances  of  the  native,— 
who  speak  our  own  language  with  the  most  pronounced 
Irish  brogue. 

Comparatively  few  of  these  Irish  Argentines,  more- 
over, have  ever  crossed  the  seas  to  the  green  isle  of 
their  ancestors.  Almost  without  exception  they  are 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      263 

bitterly  anti-English  in  sentiment.  Originally  sprung 
from  the  lower  class  Irish  peasantry,  to  whom  the  mis- 
erable conditions  of  emigrant  life  in  the  Argentine,  a 
generation  or  two  back,  were  far  less  forbidding  than 
to  the  average  British  emigrant,  the  dress-suit  and  silk- 
stockinged  stage  of  luxury  attained  by  the  many  who 
have  gathered  a  bit  of  fortune  from  the  generous  soil, 
is  to  them  a  satisfaction  that  might  not  appeal  so 
strongly  to  the  classes  which  England  and  Scotland  are 
pouring  into  Canada  at  the  present  time.  His  religion 
also  fitting  in  with  that  of  the  country  is  another  factor 
that  has  helped  to  make  the  Irishman  at  home  in  the 
Argentine. 

Under  the  British  Treaty  wjth  the  Argentine,  the 
children  born  in  the  country  of  BritisITpare'nts"  occupy 
a~~5ume"what  curious  position  as__regards  nationality. 
WKHeTtEeTr  parents  remain  British  subjects,  unless  — 
and  this  rarely  indeed  —  they  deliberately  renounce 
their  birthright  to  become  nationalised  Argentines, 
children  born  in,  the  country  are  reckoned  as  Argen- 
^mej[  and~amenablejto_the  taws  of  the  Republic  so  long 
as  th^ynEontinue^to  ljye_thfir.eiii»J)ut  they  beicom£Brit»-j 
ish  subjects  on  entering^  Mtish_territorY.  Thus,  the 
native  son  of  British  parents  must  conform  to  the  law 
of  military  service,  while  the  native-born  daughter 
ranks  with  all  other  Argentine  women  in  her  disabili- 
ties as  to  the  personal  control  of  her  property  in  the 
event  of  her  marrying  in  that  country.  Yet,  on  going 
to  London,  that  son  and  daughter  cease,  for  the  time 
being,  to  be  Argentine  subjects,  so  far  as  British  law 
is  concerned,  and  are  there  accepted  as  native-born 
Britishers. 


264  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Whether  this  curious  international  arrangement  ex- 
ists in  connection  with  any  other  European  countries, 
I  know  not;  but  suspect  it  does  not,  else  the  heroic  ef- 
forts of  many  foreign  women  residents,  and  especially 
the  French,  to  maintain  the  nationality  of  their  chil- 
dren, would  not  be  necessary.  Seldom  does  a  steamer 
leave  Buenos  Ayres  for  Europe  without  .carrying  sev- 
eral lonely  women  who  have  left  their  husbands,  per- 
haps in  some  remote  corner  of  the  Pampa,  in  order 
that  the  child  to  be  born  may  see  the  light  under  the 
flag  of  its  parents'  country.  M.  Huret  mentions  the 
case  of  a  French  lady  who,  in  addition  to  a  long  and 
toilsome  journey  from  the  interior,  undertook  the  trip 
to  Europe  and  back  on  two  occasions  within  three  years 
thus  to  preserve  the  French  nationality  of  her  children. 
With  English  mothers  the  chief,  indeed  the  only  reason 
for  following  this  course  is  to  save  any  son  of  theirs 
from  the  burdsn-of  military  service.  And  many  a  poor 
lady  who  has'  made  the  trip  has  been  disappointed  to  be 
told  the  child  was  a  girl ! 

Argentine  statesmen  are  most  insistent  on  the  main- 
tenance of  the  conditions  that  go  with  Argentine  citi- 
zenship, and  to  such  a  point  that  the  famous  Bartolome 
Mitre,  one  of  the  greatest  men  the  nation  has  pro- 
duced, declared  that,  rather  than  withdraw  the  condi- 
tion, that  he  who  becomes  a  citizen  of  the  Republic 
must  renounce  his  allegiance  to  his  native  land,  he 
would  "  set  fire  to  his  country  from  all  sides." 
Officialism  is  alert  and  open-eyed  in  its  watch  and  ward 
over  the  native-born  sons  of  foreigners  who  seek  to 
evade  their  military  obligations.  So  far  as  I  could 
gather,  there  was  but  little  disposition  to  do  so  on  the 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      265 

part  of  most  of  the  young  citizens  sprung  from  Gringo 
parents;  rather  are  they  apt  to  look  down  upon  the 
country  of  their  fathers,  and  to  swell  with  pride  at  be- 
ing privileged  to  serve  the  Argentine. 

Exceptions  to  this  rule  will  most  usually  be  found 
among  the  sons  of  resident  Britishers,  though  many  of 
them,  and  especially  the  Irish,  willingly  do  their  duty 
by  the  Republic.  I  remember  overhearing  the  mother 
of  one  of  these  young  Irish  portenos  scolding  him  be- 
cause he  insisted  on  speaking  Spanish,  even  among  his 
own  people,  where  English  (with  a  thick  brogue)  was 
the  language  of  the  family  circle.  He  had  served  his 
term  in  the  Republican  army,  and  gloried  in  reciting  its 
illustrious  achievements,  before  which  the  efforts  of  the 
poor  blunderers  who  muddled  through  with  such  foot- 
ling officers  as  Napoleon  and  Wellington  paled  into 
insignificance.  What  were  the  British  Grenadiers  to 
the  Granaderos  de  San  Martin?  What  indeed!  But 
the  Englishmen  and  Scotsmen  who,  by  accident  of 
birth,  rank  as  Argentine  citizens,  and  have  done  their 
military  service,  are  comparatively  few  in  proportion 
to  the  whole.  I  have  met  native-born  Argentines  not 
a  few  who  were  far  less  enamoured  of  the  country  and 
its  ways,  and  more  sanely  appreciative  of  old  England 
than  many  British  residents  who  had  better  reason  to 
entertain  these  sentiments. 

A  certain  lofty  contemgt^  for  the  Englishman  at 
homejs  to_be  noted  in  the  attitude  of  the  "  British^ Col- 
ony_"  to  things  British.  "  I  have  no  use  for  the  un- 
travelled  Englishman,"  said  an  Argentine-born  Eng- 
lishman to  me.  This  gentleman's  parents  had  evi- 
dently been  so  essentially  English  that  their  son,  now 


266  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

a  man  of  about  fifty,  had  grown  up  and  attained  to 
prosperity  without  being  able  to  speak  more  than 
"  Gringo  Spanish."  He  had  no  use  for  the  untrav- 
elled  Englishman,  and  yet  I  shall  venture  to  say  that 
many  a  Lancashire  or  Yorkshire  man  who  has  trav- 
elled no  farther  than  London  will  have  as  broad  an 
outlook  as  the  English  porteno  who  has  never  been 
outside  of  the  Argentine.  This  very  gentleman,  one 
of  the  most  charming  and  agreeable  of  the  British  res- 
idents with  whom  I  came  into  touch,  had  himself  vis- 
ited England  for  the  first  time  two  years  before  I  met 
him,  and  confessed  that  the  old  land,  with  its  unlim- 
ited facilities  for  the  larger  enjoyment  of  social  life, 
made  a  deep  impression  on  him,  even  to  the  point  of 
awakening  the  desire  to  go  "  home  "  and  avail  himself 
of  his  British  birthright  for  the  rest  of  his  days. 

Judge  ye,  therefore,  to  what  extent  he  was  entitled 
to  sneer  at  the  untravelled  Englishman !  So  far  as 
enlarging  one's  horizon  or  enriching  the  mind  is  con- 
cerned, a  month  on  the  Continent  of  Europe,  amid 
historic  scenes  and  in  touch  with  the  grand,  great  things 
of  the  past,  will  do  more  than  many  years  of  Buenos 
Ayres.  Thus  I  was  at  first  inclined  to  stiffen  against 
my  porteiio  friend  and  resent  his  suggestion,  but  I  had 
misunderstood  him,  and  we  were  really  in  entire  har- 
mony, he  and  I.  His  point  was  that  the  Englishman 
who  arrives  in  Buenos  Ayres  direct  from  England,  and 
has  never  before  travelled  throughout  his  own  coun- 
try or  even  troubled  about  that  Continental  tour 
is  apt  to  prove  a  social  bore  to  his  fellow-countrymen 
in  Buenos  Ayres.  I  concur  most  heartily,  for  this  is 
the  very  type  of  Englishman  who  discusses  in  the  loud- 


'  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      267 

est  voice  and  with  the  most  unreasoning  bigotry  the  in- 
comparable advantages  of  the  Argentine  over  the  be- 
nighted little  island  he  has  left.  Nor  must  it  be  sup- 
posed that  the  seven  thousand  miles  from  the  Thames 
to  the  River  Plate  do  anything  appreciably  to  reduce 
the  untravelled  state  of  this  Englishman.  There  is 
not  a  great  deal  to  see,  and  what  there  is  slips  past  the 
average  voyager  without  notice,  so  that  he  reaches  his 
journey's  end  in  the  same  splendid  state  of  untravelled 
ignorance  that  he  left  his  native  town  in  England. 

In  any  consideration  of  the  British  colony,  we  ought 
to  have  established  in  our  minds  what  exactly  are  its 
constituents.  A"Teiy^TgeTrumber ^TTts  members  are 
associated  with  the  management  of  the  railways. 
Even  readers  who  are  only  indifferently  informed  on 
South  American  subjects  are  probably  aware  that  the 
British  are  the  great  railway  makers  of  the  world,  and 
that  the  thousands  of  miles  of  lines  which  interlace  the 
far-flung  towns  of  the  Argentine  are  monuments  of 
British  enterprise,  while  some  £150,000,000  of  good 
English  money  has  gone  to  their  making.  In  this 
alone  the  Britishers  have  proved  themselves  the  great- 
est benefactors  of  the  country,  although  it  has  not  been 
entirely  a  work  of  philanthropy.  •  The  railways,  then, 
being  chiefly  British  concerns,  ^how  a  natural  prefer- 
Vnce^for  jBritish  employees,  and  thousands  of  young 
Britons  are  serving  on  tTTem  to-day  in  all  sorts  of  ca- 
pacities, but  chiefly  as  clerks,  accountants,  draughts- 
men, engineers,  and  department  managers. 

Time  was  when  the  young  railway  employee  in  Eng- 
land who  secured  a  post  in  the  Argentine  went  direct 
from  a  thistly  pasturage  to  a  field  of  clover;  was  able 


268  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

to  keep  his  horse  and  ruffle  it  with  the  best.  That  was 
before  the  standardising  of  the  currency,  when  a  paper 
peso  would  occasionally  be  as  good  as  gold,  and  usu- 
ally a  great  deal  better  than  it  has  been  since  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  caja  de  conversion.  To-day  they 
speak  of  those  times  as  of  a  Golden  Age  that  has  van- 
ished, and  now  the  lot  of  the  minor  railway  employee 
is  by  no  means  an  enviable  one.  It  is  true  that  he  will 
probably  receive  a  salary  twice  or  two  and  a  half  times 
greater  than  he  got  at  home,  but,  as  I  have  already 
made  clear,  the  net  result  of  such  a  salary  will  be  that 
financially  his  Argentine  condition,  if  not  worse  than 
his  British,  will  be  but  little  better.  He  will  handle 
more  money,  and  he  will  get  a  great  deal  less  for  what 
he  spends.  Meanwhile,  he  has  signed  his  two  or  three 
years'  agreement,  and  must  struggle  on,  however  in- 
adequately he  is  financed  for  the  fight.  Falling  read- 
ily into  the  ways  of  his  better  situated  countrymen,  he 
endeavours  to  vie  with  them,  and  in  the  process  is 
lucky  indeed  if  he  avoids  running  into  debt.  From  this 
class,  to  which  naturally  there  are  many  exceptions 
among  the  higher  placed  officials  —  many  of  whom  are 
men  of  outstanding  ability,  handsomely  paid  and  more 
liberally  treated  than  they  would  be  in  similar  positions 
in  Great  Britain  or  North  America  —  we  have  not  the 
best  of  material  for  the  building  of  the  British  colony. 
TheJBritish  banks  and  financial  agencies,  so  numer- 
ous througho^F~fKe~^rpubTic,  "afe^very  largely  staffed 
from  home,  though  there  is  also  a  large  native  element 
in  every  office,  as  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  oper- 
ations of  these  banks  are  confined  to  a  British  clientele. 
Far  from  that;  I  should  imagine  that  the  large  major- 


'  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      269 

ity  of  depositors  with  such  as  the  London  and  River 
Plate  Bank  were  foreigners.  Certainly,  to  judge  by 
my  occasional  visits  to  that  busiest  of  banks,  there  were 
always  fewer  Britishers  among  those  waiting  on  the 
outside  of  the  counters  than  there  were  English-speak- 
ing accountants  and  cashiers  on  the  inside.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  heads  of  departments  who  were,  I  think, 
without  exception,  Britishers,  the  staff  contained  many 
English-speaking  portenos,  but  working  away  at  the 
books,  and  not  in  touch  with  the  public,  one  could  note 
many  essentially  British  faces.  This  is  typical  of  most 
of  these  banks  operating  in  South  America,  some  per- 
haps employing  more  of  their  fellow  countrymen  than 
others.  If  anything,  the  Anglo-South-American  Bank 
seemed  to  me  to  find  employment  for  even  more  Eng- 
lishmen than  the  average  in  its  various  branches  in  the 
Argentine  and  along  the  Pacific  Coast. 

The  young  men  drafted  out  from  England  for  em- 
ployment in  these  banks  are,  I  imagine,  of  a  somewhat 
better  social  status  and  also  better  paid  than  the  ruck 
of  the  railways  employees.  In  contrast  with  the  condi- 
tions of  service  and  remuneration  at  home,  the  bank 
clerk  in  the  Argentine  certainly  does  seem  to  better  his 
position  somewhat,  or,  more  correctly,  he  attains  ad- 
vancement earlier  than  he  would  at  home.  He  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  doomed  to  a  long  and  probably  perma- 
nent exile,  as  there  seems  little  disposition  on  the  part 
of  the  home  offices  to  find  openings  in  London  for  any 
of  their  employees  once  they  have  become  accustomed 
to  the  work  and  life  of  South  America.  This  is  prob- 
ably one  of  the  reasons  why  the  British  banking  com- 
munity throughout  the  country  appears  to  be  very  set- 


270  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tied  in  its  character,  the  constant  shifting,  so  unsatis- 
factory a  feature  of  the  clerical  staffs  of  the  railways, 
not  being  a  characteristic  of  the  financial  fraternity. 
Then,  the  business  of  the  banker,  bringing  him  into 
direct  touch  with  the  public,  imposes  upon  all  those 
anxious  to  progress  therein,  the  necessity  of  acquiring 
the  language  of  the  country,  whereas  the  railway  clerk, 
beyond  a  string  of  technical  words  used  in  his  book- 
keeping, may  never  find  any  need  for  it,  and  rarely  in- 
deed does  an  Englishman  (and  here  I  must  bracket  the 
American  with  him)  make  any  attempt  to  learn  the 
language  unless  under  pressure  of  circumstances. 
This  is  another  of  the  reasons  for  the  superiority  of  the 
banking  clerk  over  the  railway  clerk,  as  it  will  be  found 
that  the  intelligent  Englishman  who  has  acquired  a 
good  command  of  the  language,  with  whatever  object 
in  view,  always  holds  a  position  superior  to  his  fellow 
countryman  who  has  not  done  so,  or  he  is  at  least  likely 
to  outstrip  him  in  the  long  run. 

A  third  element  in  the  making  of  the  British  colony 
are  the  "  Cable  boys."  The  various  cable  companies 
are  all  served  by  very  young  men,  who  among  British- 
ers abroad  probably  bear  away  the  bell  for  their  un- 
limited power  of  "  swanking.'*  It  is  altogether  de- 
lightful to  pass  an  hour  or  two  in  the  company  of  some 
of  these  breezy  youths.  They  leave  you  with  the  im- 
pression that  the  whole  modern  civilisation  has  been 
moulded  by  men  of  their  kidney.  They  talk  about 
their  work  with  a  zest  that  no  mere  banker,  engineer, 
journalist,  or  architect  could  possibly  impart  to  his 
humbler  calling.  They  call  it  "  The  Service,"  and  to 
hear  a  group  of  them  discussing  the  personalities  of 


"THE  BRITISH  COLONY"  AND  ITS  WAYS      271 

their  great  men  in  charge  of  branch  offices  at  fabulous 
salaries  of  £5  to  £6  a  week,  is  most  refreshing  to  the 
wearied  man  of  affairs. 

Often  have  I  watched  and  frequently  had  intercourse 
with  these  glorious  youths,  of  whose  romantic  exist- 
ence I  had  only  the  haziest  notions  until  I  went  a-trav- 
elling  in  South  America,  and  they  always  contrived  to 
make  me  feel  something  of  a  worm  for  not  having 
dedicated  such  abilities  as  I  possess  to  "  The  Service. " 
Yet  there  is  a  pathetic  side  to  them  and  their  work. 
The  Cable  Service  and  Wireless  Telegraphy  are  two 
potent  snares  for  the  youth  of  our  time.  It  really  re- 
quires a  very  modest  supply  of  grey  matter  in  the  cra- 
nium to  discharge  the  duties  of  either,  and  a  young  man 
of  twenty  is  as  good  a  cable  operator  as  he  will  be  at 
forty,  and  probably  better  than  he  will  be  at  fifty.  Few 
are  they  who  can  hope  to  rise  to  the  more  responsible 
managerial  positions.  The  bulk  of  them  grow  up  into 
disillusioned,  under-paid,  and  aimless  men.  It  is  a 
service  for  youths,  in  which  they  quickly  attain  profi- 
ciency, and  what,  for  youth,  is  a  substantial  wage;  but 
"  soon  ripe,  soon  rot."  So  that  whenever  I  came  in 
touch  with  those  swaggering  "  boys,"  I  used  to  see 
hovering  behind  them  shadowy  figures  with  grey,  sad 
faces,  and  did  not  grudge  them  their  swanking  days. 

Yet  another  of  the  constituents  of  the  "  colony  "  is 
furnished  from  the  ranks  of  the  commission  agents  and 
local  representatives  of  our  export ing^firms.  Many 
>s7)?~lKe  large' inan^factu ring  firms  maintain  their  own 
offices  and  staffs  under  the  management  of  able  assist- 
ants who  have  been  trained  at  home,  while  many  more 
are  content  to  be  represented  on  a  commission  basis  by 


272  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

agents,  who  are  their  own  masters  and  handle  the  busi- 
ness of  several  firms  whose  interests  do  not  clash. 
Among  these  will  be  found  not  a  few  of  the  most  pros- 
perous members  of  the  British  community,  men  of  self- 
reliance,  initiative,  individuality.  There  are  also  to  be 
considered  in  this  connection,  though  the  bond  that 
binds  them  to  the  British  colony  is  ever  loosening, 
fellow  countrymen  who  have  permanently  established 
themselves  as  local  tradesmen,  conducting  every  vari- 
ety of  business,  such  as  chemist,  draper,  grocer,  jewel- 
ler, bootseller,  furniture  dealer,  bookseller,  and  so 
forth.  In  all  parts  of  Buenos  Ayres,  and  in  a  lesser 
degree  in  the  larger  towns  of  the  country,  the  wan- 
derer will  note  familiar  British  names  over  shop  win- 
dows, often  with  the  Christian  name  in  Spanish,  Juan 
for  John,  D^ego  for  James,  and  so  on.  It  is  a  fair 
assumption  that  when  the  English  tradesman  has  taken 
to  use  the  Spanish  form,  he  intends  to  strike  his  roots 
deep  into  the  new  soil.  His  children  will  become  more 
Argentine  than  British,  and  theirs  British  not  at  all. 

But  perhaps  the  most  important,  and  I  suspect  the 
most  substantial  of  the  British  community  who  have 
made  their  homes  in  this  Land  of  Fortune  are  those 
of  the  estanciero  class.  It  is  true  that  the  wealthiest 
of  thern~cannot  T)e  compared  on  a  mere  money  basis 
with  the  wealthier  natives,  who  have  seen  their  landed 
properties  increase  some  hundred  times  in  value  in  the 
last  forty  years,  whereas  most  English  estancieros  had 
to  buy  their  holdings  after  the  upward  movement  be- 
gan. Many  of  them  carry  on  farming  on  what,  com- 
pared with  the  average  conditions  in  their  native  land, 
is  a  baronial  scale,  and  as  a  rule  they  seem  to  be  pleased 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      273 

with  their  lot  and  happy  in  the  country  of  their  adop- 
tion. They  are  frequent  visitors  to  Buenos  Ayres,  and 
flock  there,  particularly  at  the  time  of  the  Agricultural 
Show,  when  their  women-folk  vie  with  each  other  in 
the  display  of  their  latest  hats  and  dresses.  Included 
among  the  agricultural  class  are  many  highly  paid  man- 
agers, usually  Englishmen  of  good  education  and  or- 
ganising ability,  who  conduct  the  intricate  affairs  of 
large  estancias  either  for  private  owners  or  for  public 
companies. 

It  is  impossible,  of  course,  to  give  in  complete  de- 
tail an  analysis  of  the  British  colony,  and  all  that  I 
have  attempted  has  been  to  suggest  very  roughly  the 
classes  that  go  to  its  composition.  It  will  be  seen  that 
it  is  first  and  last  a  purely  commercial  community.  In 
no  sense  is  it  a  repficaTof  society  as  one  knows  it  in  Eng- 
land. Every  member  of  it  is  there  to  make  money, 
and  by  the  extent  to  which  he  is  succeeding  does  he 
stand  in  the  estimation  of  the  community.  It  could 
not  be  otherwise.  It  is  true  there  are  British  schools 
with  British  instructors,  British  churches  —  a  pro- 
Cathedral  among  them  —  with  clergymen,  Noncon- 
formist pastors,  and  Irish  priests,  societies  for  literary 
discussion,  British  clubs,  charities,  hospitals,  missions 
to  seamen,  Salvation  Army  workers,  and  amateur  the- 
atrical societies;  but  the  fact  remains  that  it  is  in  the 
very  fibre  of  its  being  a  business  community,  where 
commercial  standing  takes  precedence  of  most  other 
considerations. 

At  the  same  time,  I  found  ample  evidence  in  the 
British  colony  of  a  desire  to  approximate  more  nearly 
to  the  social  observations  of  the  homeland,  to  look 


274  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

more  closely  at  the  credentials  of  newcomers  before 
taking  them  to  its  bosom.  In  the  early  days,  Buenos 
Ayres  was  one  of  the  many  dumping  places  for  was- 
trels, and  the  colonial  freedom  which  accepted  every- 
body at  his  face  value  produced  an  inevitable  mixture 
of  sorts,  so  that  not  rarely  did  Britishers  of  dubious 
antecedents  manage  to  secure  a  wife  among  the  daugh- 
ters of  some  prosperous  British  resident.  It  is  well- 
known  that  the  daughters  of  these  families  even  still 
have  great  difficulty  in  finding  suitable  husbands  of 
their  own  class,  and  during  our  stay  I  confess  I  saw 
sufficient  of  the  British  community  to  have  made  me 
extremely  careful,  had  I  intended  to  settle  in  the  town, 
in  the  choice  of  my  friends.  There  is  in  all  this  noth- 
ing that  reflects  upon  the  worthier  elements  of  the  com- 
munity; it  is  the  inevitable  outcome  of  peculiar  condi- 
tions, and  rather  than  finding  much  to  censure,  one  may 
discover  a  great  deal  to  commend  in  the  life  of  these 
exiles.  That  it  is  provincial  to  a  degree  is  scarcely  sur- 
prising, and  that  it  is  productive  of  much  genuine 
friendship,  sympathy,  mutual  helpfulness,  is  due  to  the 
generous  British  nature  on  which  it  is  based. 

Its  class_distinctions  are  being  emphasised,  and  not 
before  time.  At  first  blush  one  might  be  repelled  by 
what  seemed  the  pettiness  of  its  interests,  the  little  cor- 
roding jealousies,  its  snobbishness,  but  the  last  men- 
tioned is  at  bottom  a  praiseworthy  effort  to  raise  the 
social  level  beyond  that  obtaining  with  the  indiscrimi- 
nate mixing  of  good  and  bad  which  characterised  the 
earlier  life  of  the  community.  The  pettiness  is  ines- 
capable. A  country  town  in  England  would  probably 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS       275 

provide  no  more  gossip  and  scandal  than  any  British 
community  several  times  its  size  in  a  foreign  land. 

A  nursery  governess  comes  out  to  Buenos  Ayres  and 
stays  at  the  by-no-means-luxurious  headquarters  of  the 
Y.  W.  C.  A.  until  she  finds  a  job.  She  will  probably 
be  back  there  frequently  in  the  periods  between  her 
various  posts,  as  she  will  have  many  changes  before  she 
is  "  suited."  Eventually  she  will  meet  some  decent, 
lonely  Englishman,  managing  an  estancia  a  day  or 
two's  journey  away  in  the  Camp.  They  will  get  mar- 
ried, and  make  a  brave  show  of  it  at  the  Y.  W.  C.  A., 
and  next  day  the  Standard  will  publish  a  column  de- 
scribing the  great  event,  with  the  list  of  presents  spaced 
out  in  single  lines.  Need  one  be  surprised  if  the 
nursery  governess  suddenly  finds  herself  something  of 
a  snob  ?  She  will  immediately  "  put  on  airs,"  and  on 
her  visits  to  the  capital  with  her  husband  she  will 
ruffle  it  for  a  day  or  two  in  the  smartest  of  new  dresses 
and  the  biggest  of  hats,  just  to  advertise  the  agreeable 
fact  that  they  are  "  getting  on." 

Marriage  possibilities  form  the  favourite  gossip  of 
the  community,  and  the  Standard  even  publishes  copies 
of  invitations  that  have  been  sent  out  by  the  most  or- 
dinary members  of  the  community,  introducing  them 
with  the  words  "  The  following  wedding  invitations 
are  now  in  circulation."  The  most  vital  crisis  in  Eu- 
ropean affairs  will  receive  less  space  than  the  wedding 
of  John  Jones  and  Mary  Smith.  The  favourite  paper 
of  the  community  teems  daily  with  the  most  trivial  per- 
sonalities, even  the  social  movements  of  a  railway  clerk 
not  being  deemed  unworthy  of  record.  The  lack  of 


276  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

entertainment  causes  amateur  theatricals  to  flourish, 
and  the  English  papers  will  "  spread  themselves  "  on 
a  three  or  four  column  criticism  of  the  most  ordinary 
amateurish  production  of,  say,  "  The  Count  of  Lux- 
embourg," while  there  will  not  be  lacking  foolish  peo- 
ple to  assert  that  the  amateur  production  was  in  every 
respect  finer  than  anything  that  could  be  seen  in  the 
principal  London  theatres.  There  are  two  or  three 
of  these  dramatic  societies  with  long  rolls  of  member- 
ship, and  the  performances  are  given  in  the  regular 
theatres  some  half-a-dozen  times  per  annum,  these 
functions  being  admirable  occasions  for  the  display  of 
new  toilettes  on  the  part  of  the  ladies  of  the  audience, 
and  an  airing  for  the  gentlemen's  swallow-tails. 

I  often  thought  it  was  evidence  of  the  dearth  of  so- 
cial entertainment  that  British  residents  were  always 
eager  for  an  opportunity  to  dine  at  any  of  the  hotels, 
although  they  could  have  done  as  well,  if  not  better,  in 
their  own  homes,  so  far  as  food  was  concerned.  An 
invitation  to  dinner  at  the  hotel  had  evidently  all  the 
charm  of  an  "  event "  for  them.  Those  who  main- 
tained a  widish  circle  of  friends  would  also  occasion- 
ally offer  an  "  At  Home  "  at  the  hotel  most  patronised 
by  the  English  and  the  Americans.  In  short,  one  felt 
from  the  straits  to  which  they  seemed  to  be  put  for 
amusement  and  distraction,  that  there  was  a  great  so- 
cial hunger  in  the  community;  but  on  reflection  I  could 
see  that  even  those  evidences  of  pettiness  which  some- 
what grated  on  one  fresh  from  the  larger  life  of  Lon- 
don, were  more  apparent  than  real,  and  the  British 
residents  in  Buenos  Ayres  were  solving  fairly  well  the 
problem  of  existing  as  social  beings  in  an  unfavour- 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      277 

able  environment.  It  was  the  little  round  of  the  most 
ordinary  social  engagements,  magnified  into  artificial 
importance,  that  helped  to  make  their  exile  pleasant. 
I  can  even  imagine  myself  falling  into  a  condition  out 
there  that  would  make  the  report  of  the  wedding  of 
two  local  nobodies  quite  interesting  reading. 

The  various  literary  societies  were  also  productive 
of  some  intellectual  intercourse,  and  although  I  at- 
tended none,  thanks  to  the  English  dailies  I  was  able  to 
read  many  papers  delivered  at  their  meetings,  reprinted 
at  full  length,  which  showed  a  fair  average  of  literary 
attainment.  On  the  other  hand,  the  most  contemptible 
rubbish  that  I  have  seen  in  print  took  the  form  of 
letters  to  the  editor  of  the  Standard  or  the  Herald, 
which  gave  admittance  to  good  and  bad  indiscrim- 
inately. Ignorant  diatribes  against  English  politicians 
and  home  affairs  from  uneducated  residents,  who  re- 
joiced to  sneer  at  their  motherland,  too  often  found 
their  way  into  type  instead  of  into  the  waste  basket, 
and  could  not  but  exercise  a  bad  influence  on  other 
ignorant  members  of  the  community. 

Nay,  jt_was  among  the  British  colony  that  I  found 
more  ignorance  and  bigotry  than  I  did  amongst  trTe 
natives,  the  Spamarcfs,  the  French,  or  the  Germans. 
Snrne  of  the  sanest  c7IEcismsl5f~~the  country  to  which 
I  listened  were  made  by  natives  and  Spaniards,  and 
also  by  Italians.  I  found  the  Britishers  seldom  had 
a  well-balanced  opinion  to  deliver:  they  were  either 
disgusted  with  everything  and  longing  to  be  home,  or 
delighted  with  everything  and  never  wishing  to  re- 
turn. Out  of  many  I  can  recall  to  mind,  I  shall  select 
two,  both  young  men,  and  both  typical  asses,  whom  I 


278  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

may  describe  as  pro-Argentines,  although  neither  was 
naturalised,  and  both  had  only  been  about  five  years 
in  the  country. 

The  first  I  shall  describe  as  Mr.  Q ,  a  notorious 

bore,  who  must  surely  have  earned  a  wide  reputation 
for  his  habit  of  monopolising  the  talk  in  whatever  com- 
pany he  finds  himself.  I  first  came  into  contact  with 
him  after  listening  patiently  to  a  long  harangue,  ad- 
dressed chiefly  to  a  group  of  innocent  ladies,  on  the 
amazing  progress  of  the  Argentine.  Not  a  single 
statement  that  he  made  had  a  remote  connection  with 
fact.  I  sat  by  uncomplaining  until  he  assured  his  ad- 
miring female  group  that  Buenos  Ayres  in  the  last 
thirty  years  had  not  only  become  the  third  largest  city 
in  the  world,  but  that  in  fifty  years  it  would  unques- 
tionably have  exceeded  London  in  the  matter  of  popu- 
lation. This  was  too  much.  I  offered  to  bet  the  gen- 
tleman a  thousand  pesos  to  one  that  he  was  talking 
nonsense,  and  that  Buenos  Ayres,  apart  from  being 
already  notoriously  disproportionate  in  population  to 
the  country  as  a  whole,  was  not  third,  but  thirteenth 
of  the  world's  large  cities,  in  proof  of  which  I  was 
fortunately  able  to  produce  within  ten  minutes 
Whitaker's  Almanac  for  1912.  I  did  not,  however, 

receive  my  peso,   as  Mr.  Q declined  to  accept 

Whitaker  as  an  authority,  stating  his  information  was 
based  on  statistics  issued  by  the  Argentine  Govern- 
ment! Of  course  no  such  fool  statistics  have  ever  been 
issued,  the  third  city  of  the  world  (Paris)  containing 
twice  the  population  of  Buenos  Ayres,  though  covering 
a  much  smaller  area. 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      279 

I  had  many  other  encounters  with  the  same  gentle- 
man, who,  having  acquired  some  land  which  he  was  en- 
deavouring to  transfer  to  the  public  on  the  most  philan- 
thropic basis  (to  himself),  had  turned  himself  into 
a  walking  advertisement  for  the  glorious  Argentine, 
and  never  ceased  to  explain  to  visitors  how  completely 
played  out  was  Great  Britain,  how  rapidly  she  was  slid- 
ing down  the  slippery  slope  to  oblivion,  while  the  Ar- 
gentine was  forging  ahead  on  the  path  to  world-em- 
pire !  Please  do  not  imagine  I  am  exaggerating  one 
tittle  the  declarations  of  this  British  driveller,  who, 
by  the  way,  hadn't  acquired  a  single  sentence  of  Span- 
ish in  five  years !  He  pictured  Buenos  Ayres  as  the 
future  hub  of  the  world's  civilisation,  this  purely  agri- 
cultural country  of  the  Argentine  (featureless  and  ill 
adapted  for  any  purpose  other  than  the  growing  of 
luxurious  crops  and  the  rearing  of  vast  herds  of  cat- 
tle), as  a  teeming  land  of  wondrous  industries,  before 
which  such  things  as  England,  America,  France,  and 
Germany  have  achieved  would  have  to  pale  their  in- 
effectual fires.  No  argument  of  sanity  that  could  be 
advanced  disturbed  the  calm  serenity  with  which  this 
self-constituted  trumpeter  of  the  Argentine  reiterated 
stupidities  that  would  have  put  the  most  perfervid  pa- 
triot to  the  blush. 

I  have  described  Mr.  Q at  some  little  length, 

because,  bore  though  he  is,  he  is  typical  of  a  certain 
class  of  Englishman  whom  one  encounters  in  the  Ar- 
gentine, and  for  whom  Argentine  and  average  Eng- 
lishman alike  have  a  wholesome  contempt.  He  is  one 
of  those  aggressive,  self-assertive  "  Anglo-Argen- 


280  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tines  "  who  go  home  occasionally  and  blow  about  this 
new  land  of  promise,  to  the  ultimate  disillusionment 
of  such  as  give  ear. 

The  other  Englishman  I  have  in  mind,  who  also 
typifies  a  certain  class,  is  less  offensively  anti-British 

than  Mr.   Q ,   and  his  observations  being  based 

upon  a  little  knowledge  and  a  large  inexperience,  he  is 
more  amenable  to  reason  than  the  Mr.  Q's,  who  are 
mere  windbags,  that  seek  to  cloak  their  lack  of  suc- 
cess at  home  by  magnifying  their  changed  condition  in 

the  new  land.     Mr.  F ,  as  I  shall  call  the  other, 

had  a  little  knack  from  time  to  time  of  dropping  such 
sage  remarks  as,  "  Where  in  the  whole  of  London 
will  you  find  such  evidence  of  wealth  as  you  do  in  a 
walk  along  the  Avenida  Alvear?" — "Where  in  Lon- 
don will  you  see  so  many  beautiful  dresses,  such  wealth 
in  millinery,  as  at  Palermo  on  a  Sunday  after- 
noon? " — "Talk  about  the  business  of  London,  what 
is  it  in  comparison  with  the  business  of  Buenos 
Ayres?" — "Were  you  not  astounded  at  the  mag- 
nificent buildings  when  you  came  to  Buenos  Ayres,  all 
so  bright  and  clean  looking,  after  London?" — and 
so  on  ad  nauseam. 

We  dubbed  Mr.  F "  the  silly  ass  observer." 

For  each  of  these  examples  of  his  acumen  in  the  art 
of  comparative  observation  breathes  of  ignorance  and 
thoughtlessness.  They  are,  indeed,  almost  too  stupid 

to  call  for  notice,  but  as  Mr.  F was  personally 

a  pleasant  and  amiable  young  Englishman,  I  was  often 
at  pains  to  explain  matters  to  him,  and  always  found 
that  at  the  root  of  his  odious  comparisons  lay  the 


"THE  BRITISH  COLONY"  AND  ITS  WAYS      281 

simple  fact  that  he  had  lived  in  London  with  his  eyes 
shut  and  his  mind  untouched  by  the  grandeur  that 
surrounded  him.  How  many  hundreds  of  thousands 

of  young  men  are  like  Mr.  F !     They  look  on 

the  old  familiar  things  of  home  with  unseeing  eyes, 
and  when,  perchance,  in  some  new  land  they  begin  to 
take  notice,  they  lack  standards  of  comparison  to  guide 

them.     When  I  explained  to  poor  Mr.  F ,  who 

was  honestly  overwhelmed  by  the  glory  that  is  Buenos 
Ayres,  that  Threadneedle  Street  or  Lombard  Street 
in  ye  antique  city  of  London,  though  they  look  as  noth- 
ing to  the  eye  that  cannot  see  beyond  their  drab  and 
smoky  walls,  might  comfortably  purchase  the  entire 
Argentine  and  all  that  in  it  is,  from  the  torrid  north 
to  the  foggy  south,  and  have  something  over  to  be  go- 
ing on  with ;  when  I  impressed  him  with  the  undoubted 
fact  that  most  of  the  wealth  which  he  saw  around  him 
had  come  into  being  thanks  to  British  money,  and 
that  a  very  substantial  portion  of  the  profits  being  de- 
rived from  the  exploitation  of  the  country  went  every 
year  into  London  pockets,  he  began  to  see  things  in  a 
new  light.  To  compare  the  Avenida  Alvear  with 
Park  Lane,  merely  shows  that  one  has  not  observed 
Park  Lane,  or  that  he  is  not  aware  that  the  Avenida 
Alvear  and  the  few  streets  thereabout  which  repre- 
sent the  Mayfair,  Belgravia,  and  West  End  of  Lon- 
don, are  as  an  inch  to  an  ell.  Mr.  F is  very  rep- 
resentative of  the  "cable  boy"  standard  of  intelli- 
gence, but  in  other  respects  a  fine,  clean  English  type, 
that  one  would  value  all  the  more  as  an  element  in  the 
British  Colony  were  it  given  to  a  little  reflection  be- 


282  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

fore  it  aired  its  opinions  on  Argentine  and  the  world 
in  general,  of  which  its  experience  has  been  notably 
slight. 

^Hardly  at  all  does  th^ejmigrant^lass^nlexJnto  the 
British  Colony.  British  workpeople  there  are  occa- 
sTonally  to  be  met  throughout  the  Argentine,  but  the 
country  as  a  whole  is  ill  adapted  for  them.  Any  per- 
son who  by  word  of  mouth  or  writing  spreads  abroad 
the  idea  that  artisans  or  those  of  the  labouring  class 
of  Great  Britain  will  find  the  Argentine  an  attractive 
field,  may  be  doing  a  very  mischievous  thing.  The  con- 
ditions of  life  in  which  the  Italian  emigrants,  the 
Spaniards,  Poles,  Russians,  Syrians,  and  all  the  rest 
of  them  herd  together  in  the  cities  or  make  shift  to 
exist  in  rough  shanties  in  the  Camp  are  impossible 
to  even  the  commonest  class  of  English  or  Scots  work- 
people, if  the  language  difficulty  did  not  exist  to  make 
matters  still  worse  for  them. 

But  many  British  workpeople  are  there  under  con- 
ditions very  different  from  those  of  the  other  emi- 
grants. They  are  chiefly  railway  engineers,  employed 
as  foremen  or  as  expert  workers  in  the  great  work- 
shops of  the  different  railway  companies,  or  as  locomo- 
tive drivers.  Their  conditions  of  life,  although  I  fail 
to  see  wherein  they  are  greatly  superior  to  those  ob- 
taining in  their  native  land  among  their  class,  having 
regard  to  the  different  purchasing  value  of  the  wages 
earned,  are  at  least  made  agreeable  by  association  with 
fellow-workers  of  their  own  race,  and  the  possibility 
of  saving  more  money  than  they  would  be  likely  to  do 
at  home.  For  example,  where  a  working  man  in  Eng- 
land might  be  able  to  save  £20  ($100)  per  year,  he 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      283 

can  at  least  contrive  to  save  the  same  relative  propor- 
tion from  his  wages  in  the  Argentine,  and  as  his  wages 
will  not  be  less  than  double,  and  perhaps  two  and  a 
half  times  what  they  would  have  been  in  England,  by 
the  same  ratio  may  his  savings  be  increased.  These 
workmen  have  also  security  of  employment,  and,  in 
fine,  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  emigrant  class. 
They  find  grievances,  none  the  less,  and  even  went  on 
strike  in  the  year  1911. 

Owing  to  the  little  communities  in  which  they  live 
being  almost  entirely  British,  they  do  not  Assimilate 
with  the  natives,  and  few  of  them,  even  after~many 
years  inlrie  country,  have  picked  up  more  than  some 
odd  words  of  the  language.  A  friend  of  mine,  who 
was  rather  shaky  in  his  Spanish,  was  waylaid  at  a 
railway  station  in  the  interior  and  wished  to  have  a 
train  stopped  at  a  point  along  the  line  where  there  was 
no  station,  to  enable  him  to  reach  a  certain  estancia. 
He  managed  to  explain  this  in  Spanish  to  the  station- 
master,  but  the  latter  was  unable  to  interpret  it  to  the 
engine-driver,  who  turned  out  to  be  English  and  did 
not  know  a  word  of  what  he  called  "  their  blooming 
lingo !  "  These  sturdy  and  skilled  artisans  naturally 
do  not  count  in  the  British  Colony  of  Buenos  Ayres, 
and  most  of  them  live  in  the  railway  centres  of  the 
provinces,  and  come  only  occasionally  to  the  capital 
for  a  trip. 

What  must  strike  the  British  visitor  in  Buenos  Ayres 
with  a  curious  air  of  home  is  the  railway  bookstall  at 
Retire,  Once,  or  at  Constitucion.  The  former  looks 
as  familiar  as  a  London  suburban  bookstall,  with  all 
sorts  of  English  periodicals,  from  the  Strand  Magazine 


284  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

to  Comic  Cuts,  bundles  of  "  sixpenny  "  and  "  seven- 
penny  "  novels,  The  Times,  weekly  edition,  Lloyds' 
News,  and  many  another  familiar  title,  though  the 
prices  charged  are  naturally  two  or  three  times  those 
printed  on  the  periodicals.  These  are  evidence  of  the 
large  English  community  residing  in  the  various  sub- 
urbs served  from  the  stations  named.  The  English 
bookshops  in  the  heart  of  the  city  are  also  well-known 
centres,  being  entirely  patronised  by  the  "  colony,"  but 
the  English  grocers  drive  a  large  business  with  the  na- 
tive population,  and  employ  many  assistants  who  only 
speak  Spanish.  Still,  British  housewives  have  no  need 
to  acquire  the  language,  as  they  may  transact  all  their 
business  in  their  native  tongue,  and  it  is  no  rare  thing 
to  meet  a  lady  who  in  twenty  years  of  Buenos  Ayres 
has  not  even  got  to  know  the  Spanish  names  of  the 
common  objects  of  the  dinner  table.  In  the  provinces, 
however,  most  foreign  lady  residents  have  to  acquire 
at  least  a  smattering  of  the  native  lingo. 

A  further  element  in  the  "  colony "  may  be  de- 
scribed as  the  floating  jpopulatipnL  of  British  visitor s_ 
who  make  periodicaTJourneys  to  the  Argentine  in  pur- 
suit of  business.  The  stay-at-home  has  no  faint  no- 
tion of  the  extraordinary  trafficking  of  his  race  in  for- 
eign parts.  Veritable  battalions  of  commercial 
travellers  representing  British  houses  visit  the  Argen- 
tine each  year,  staying  from  two  to  six  months  at  a 
time,  and  the  hotels  are  always  sheltering  Englishmen 
who  seem  to  have  nothing  to  do  beyond  taking  their 
meals  and  playing  billiards  for  weeks  on  end,  but  who 
are  really  waiting  the  signing-up  of  contracts.  One 
gentleman  I  knew  had  put  in  nearly  nine  months  of 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      285 

this  strenuous  work,  and  eventually  left  in  despair. 
The  contract  for  which  he  had  been  waiting  so  long 
was  fixed  up  about  three  weeks  afterwards,  and  went 
to  a  German  firm  whose  representative  had  perhaps 
been  more  patient  in  waiting,  or  more  liberal  (or  more 
discreet)  in  his  bestowal  of  backsheesh. 

Those  visitors  whose  stays  are  short  do  not  fare 
badly  in  the  Argentine  capital,  and  as  a  rule  retain 
rather  pleasant  memories  of  the  place,  although  not 
a  few  with  whom  I  conversed  really  dreaded  the  neces- 
sity of  having  to  return,  as  they  found  time  hang  so 
heavily  on  their  hands.  Then  there  comes  occasionally 
one  of  the  scribbling  fraternity,  who  fixes  a  little  round 
of  engagements,  hurries  to  see  the  sights  of  the  place, 
and  flits  away  again  to  entertain  a  public  quite  as  well- 
informed  as  he  or  she  may  be  by  the  little  that  he  or 
she  has  seen  in  the  few  days'  stay.  I  spent  some  time 
with  an  American  correspondent,  who  did  not  know 
a  word  either  of  French  or  Spanish,  and  yet  had  the 
fortitude  to  contribute  a  series  of  articles  to  one  of  the 
local  papers,  giving  his  valuable  impressions  of  a  coun- 
try and  a  people  into  whose  mind  he  was  not  able  even 
to  peep.  His  articles,  of  course,  were  written  in  Eng- 
lish and  translated  into  Spanish,  and  were  published 
with  great  fanfarronada,  although  his  literary  rep- 
utation was  unknown  even  to  me,  whose  business  it  has 
been  for  many  years  to  keep  in  touch  with  literary 
reputations  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

The  regulation  course  for  the  "  globe-trotter  "  who 
flits  through  the  Argentine  for  a  week  or  so,  to  write 
a  book  thereon,  is  to  motor  round  the  various  pub- 
lic buildings,  interview  a  few  of  the  official  heads,  en- 


286  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

deavouring,  if  possible,  to  have  a  talk  with  the  Presi- 
dent,—  a  comparatively  easy  matter  in  all  South 
American  Republics,  the  President  being  sort  of  ex- 
officio  Chief  of  Publicity, —  engineer  an  invitation  to 
a  model  estancia  to  stay  overnight,  and  an  interview 
with  a  reporter  from  the  Standard  to  announce  the 
gestation  of  the  great  work  that  will  later  see  the  light 
in  London  or  New  York.  The  usual  practice  of  the 
more  or  less  distinguished  visitor  is  to  deliver  himself 
of  the  most  fulsome  flattery  of  all  that  he  has  seen,  and 
to  lay  on  the  butter  with  a  trowel.  To  this  rule  there 
are  occasional  exceptions,  and  I  gather  that  the 
Princess  of  Pless,  who  paid  Buenos  Ayres  a  visit  in 
August  of  1913,  when  I  was  staying  in  Chili,  was 
one  of  these  exceptions.  The  Buenos  Ayres  corres- 
pondent of  La  Union  of  Santiago  sent  to  his  paper 
an  amusing  little  article  on  the  Princess,  which  I  think 
worthy  of  translating,  as  it  will  make  an  acceptable 
tailpiece  to  this  chapter.  He  wrote: 

She  has  gone!  A  wandering  star,  seeking  a  constellation 
wherein  she  may  shine  with  due  refulgence  and  without  suf- 
fering eclipse  from  other  stars  of  greater  brilliance.  She  had 
a  glimpse  of  the  Argentine  in  her  dreams  as  the  ideal  land  of 
aristocracy  by  having  read  in  the  "  British  Cyclopaedia  "  (sic) 
that  in  this  country  there  are  no  titles  of  nobility  other  than 
those  of  the  wash-tub. 

Yesterday  she  stated  in  one  of  her  farewell  confidences: 
"I  go  away  horribly  disappointed!  Not  a  sauvage  (sic)9  not 
a  tiger,  not  a  Paraguayan  crocodile!" 

What  a  useless  voyage!  To  confront  the  dangers  of  three 
thousand  leagues  of  sea  and  twenty  days  of  poor  food  and 
worse  sleep  to  come  to  see  savages,  when  these  can  be  found 


"  THE  BRITISH  COLONY  "  AND  ITS  WAYS      287 

in  thousands  within  twenty- four  hours  of  London!  In  this 
poor  America  there  remain  no  other  savages  than  those  Euro- 
peans who  exploit  the  miserable  natives  of  Putumayo.  The 
veritable  Indians  of  the  tales  of  Fenimore  Cooper  and  of 
Gustave  Aimard,  the  scalp  hunters,  the  throat  cutters,  the 
mutilators  of  children,  are  to  be  found  in  the  very  heart  of 
Europe,  in  the  countries  of  "  The  Merry  Widow."  There 
the  Princess  ought  to  have  gone  a-hunting  for  those  sanguinary 
curiosities  and  to  satisfy  her  appetite  for  exotics. 

She  came  here  nervously  afraid  of  the  prospect  of  being  car- 
ried off  by  Calufucura,  and  even  resisted  the  temptation  to 
visit  the  estancia  of  Pereyra,  fearing  lest  the  Cacique  Catriel 
should  force  her  to  prepare  the  pipe  of  counsel  surrounded  by 
his  tribe,  and  she  goes  away  disenchanted  by  not  having  seen 
an  Indian  even  in  the  distance,  and  disgusted  at  having  had  to 
suffer  the  sugary  gallantries  of  some  of  our  dandies  of  the  old 
school,  little  fortunate  in  the  conquest  of  princesses. 

But,  above  all,  what  mortified  her  most  and  most  precipi- 
tated her  departure,  rendering  her  ill  at  ease  during  her  stay 
in  Buenos  Ayres,  is  the  fact  that  she  did  not  rank  here  in  the 
front  file  of  beauty,  nor  shine  above  the  rest  in  fashion,  nor 
find  herself  in  any  sort  a  protagonist.  She  was  no  more  than 
one  among  the  mass  of  our  women,  and  less  than  many  of  our 
distinguished  ladies.  Thus  she  has  gone  as  she  came,  after 
having  attempted  to  discover  some  labyrinthine  forest  nevef 
visited  by  man,  without  encountering  more  than  cultivated  soil 
and  agricultural  machines  where  she  had  hoped  to  see  Indians 
discharging  their  poisoned  arrows  and  brandishing  their  for- 
midable tomahawks.  And  thus  it  is  that  she  says  in  her  despite 
"  America  has  lost  all  her  virginities,  even  the  celebrated  vir- 
ginity of  her  forests !  " 

Yesterday  the  Princess  embarked,  and  on  seeing  her  aboard 
the  Arayaguaya,  using  her  walking-stick  like  a  crutch,  to 
disguise  her  mincing  gait, —  alone,  with  not  even  the  companion- 
ship of  a  "  snob,"  who  might  have  attempted  to  win  her  good- 


288  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

will,  not  even  a  lady  of  honour  dazzled  by  her  noble  title, — 
there  came  to  our  mind,  though  altered  by  the  circumstances, 
the  lines  of  that  farewell  elegy  on  the  remains  of  Sir  John 
Moore : 

"  Not  a  drum  was  heard,  not  a  triumphal  note  —  As  she 
arrived  at  the  Darsena  Norte  —  Not  a  soldier  discharged  his 
farwell  schot  —  When  the  steamer  left  the  Argentine  shore !  " 

The  intrinsic  merits  of  this  little  sketch  and  the 
charm  of  the  concluding  effort  in  English,  surely 
justify  its  reproduction!  What  on  earth  the  Princess 
of  Pless  may  have  said  to  lead  to  this  display  of  jour- 
nalistic courtesy,  I  do  not  know,  but  I  suspect  that 
she  must  have  ventured  some  words  of  frank  criticism, 
and  that  is  precisely  what  the  common,  untramelled  Ar- 
gentine does  not  want.  He  asks  for  butter,  and  he 
wants  it  thick,  and  if  you  can  add  a  layer  of  sugar, — 
for  he  has  a  sweet  tooth  —  so  much  the  better.  Most 
of  the  British  Colony  know  this,  and  also  know  on 
which  side  their  bread  is  buttered.  Thus  the  English 
visitor  who  is  indiscreet  enough  publicly  to  express  a 
frank  and  honest  opinion  of  anything  that  does  not 
meet  with  his  approval  in  Buenos  Ayres  or  the  Ar- 
gentine, will  scarcely  expect  to  be  grappled  to  its  bosom 
by  hooks  of  steel.  I  am  persuaded,  however,  that  the 
better-class  of  native  Argentine  opinion  is  quite  ca- 
pable of  sustaining  honest  criticism  and  profiting 
thereby. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE    EMIGRANT   IN    LIGHT  AND   SHADE 

THERE  is  a  popular  story  in  Buenos  Ayres  of  a  Spanish 
emigrant  who  had  just  arrived  with  wife  and  children, 
and  as  the  group  was  crossing  the  Paseo  de  Julio,  the 
wife  espied  a  silver  coin  in  the  gutter.  She  called  to 
her  husband  to  pick  it  up,  but  he  disdainfully  answered, 
"  I  have  no  concern  with  mere  silver  money,  when  I 
have  come  here  to  gather  gold !  "  The  story  usually 
ends  here,  but  I  suspect  the  frugal  wife  of  picking  up 
that  coin  herself  and  thereby  making  money  more  easily 
than  her  husband  would  be  like  to  do  for  some  time  to 
come.  For  certain  it  is  that  the  Argentine  is  no  "  land 
of  gold,"  such  as  our  world  has  had  to  marvel  at  in 
California,  Australia,  South  Africa,  and  Alaska. 
No, —  it  is  something  better  than  any  merely  aurifer- 
ous land!  So  rich  is  its  soil,  it  returns  to  those  who 
work  it  such  wondrous  increase  of  harvest  that  it  is 
truly  an  inexhaustible  gold  mine.  But  the  first  and 
final  essential  to  the  winning  of  its  gold  is  Labour. 
This,  as  we  know,  Italy  has  given  to  the  Argentine  in 
abundant  measure,  and  those  who  only  know  the  Italian 
by  such  specimens  of  his  race  as  grind  organs  and  sell 
ice-cream  in  England,  have  no  least,  small  notion  of 
what  a  splendid  fellow  he  is,  his  many  vices  notwith- 
standing. 

Before  we  take  a  look  at  the  different  classes  of 
emigrants  which  the  Argentine  attracts  and  their  in- 

289 


290  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

fluence  on  the  development  of  the  country,  a  word  or 
two  on  the  land  system  may  be  in  place.  The  time 
will  come,  I  doubt  not,  when  some  revolutionary 
change  will  be  forced  upon  the  country,  as  the  land 
is  too  closely  held  by  the  landed  aristocracy  —  the  mul- 
titudes^ of  small  lots  sold  by  speculative  dealers  not- 
withstanding. In  this  young  country,  with  its  Repub- 
lican Government  and  its  progressive  ideas,  we  en- 
counter the  anomaly  of  a  mere  handful  of  fabulously 
wealthy  proprietors  owning  the  greatest  part  of  a  vast 
country  —  nearly  eight  tinies  larger  than  the  British 
Isles.  Meanwhile,  these  prodigious  tracts  of  terri- 
tory being  so  tightly  held  by  a  few  private  owners, 
have  the  effect  of  increasing  the  values  of  the  negoti- 
able land,  of  which  there  is  evidently  still  sufficient  to 
meet  the  demands  of  the  moment.  Double  the  popu- 
lation, however,  and  such  a  change  will  pass  over  the 
scene  that  legislation  to  force  the  hands  of  private 
owners  and  loosen  their  grip  on  the  lion's  share  of  the 
Republic's  soil  will  be  inevitable. 

The  system  on  which  the  land  is  worked  is  also 
charged  with  danger  to  the  social  development  of  the 
community,  and  some  day  it,  too,  must  give  place  to 
a  better  adjustment  as  between  the  owner  and  the 
worker.  I  have  made  frequent  reference  in  previous 
chapters  to  the  estancias,  without  entering  into  any  de- 
tail as  to  the  working  of  these  great  agricultural 
estates,  which,  curiously  enough,  are  known  by  the 
Spanish  word  for  a  dwelling-house  or  a  sitting-room 
(estancia  in  South  America  means  either  a  farm,  a 
country  house,  or  the  whole  area  of  landed  property 
under  one  ownership).  Here,  however,  I  must  ex- 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       291 

/ 

plain  something  of  the  peculiar  methods  of  working 
these  estates. 

The  owner  himself  will  cultivate  at  his  own  cost  a 
certain  portion  with  alfalfa,  wheat,  maize,  or  linseed, 
as  the  case  may  be,  and  will  maintain  immense  herds 
of  cattle,  sheep,  and  horses,  according  as  he  specialises 
in  agriculture  or  in  live-stock.  But  the  estancias  are 
usually  much  too  large  for  their  owners  to  develop  to 
their  full  extent,  and  thus  have  grown  up  two  meth- 
ods of  co-operation,  neither  of  which  has  in  it  the 
germ  of  permanency,  both  being  based  on  one  man's 
need  and  another's  opportunity.  The  one  system  is 
worked  by  the  medieros,  the  other  by  the  colonos. 
The  mediero  is  a  man  who  has  come  out  from  Spain 
or  Italy  with  some  tiny  capital  in  his  pocket  that  en- 
ables him  to  purchase  certain  agricultural  implements, 
seeds,  and  probably  to  knock  up  a  shanty  of  corrugated 
iron, —  wood  for  building  purposes  being  a  highly 
priced  commodity.  But  he  cannot  afford  to  purchase 
agricultural  land  in  any  locality  where  his  crop  would 
be  of  adequate  value  to  him  once  he  had  raised  it,  for 
wherever  the  land  is  within  reachable  distance  of  a 
railway  line,  it  is  impossible  to  purchase  it  at  anything 
like  its  actual  market  value,  the  method  of  the  Argen- 
jtine  land-seller  being  invariably  to  demand  the  price 
which  the  land  may  be  worth  in  ten  or  fifteen  years. 
The  land-vender  takes  "  long  views,"  he  is  big  with 
the  future,  so  confident  of  it  that  he  values  his  pos- 
sessions of  to-day  at  the  dream  prices  of  a  somewhat 
distant  morrow.  Now,  the  mediero  cannot  come  to 
grips  with  such  as  he,  and  cap  in  hand  he  approaches 
the  estanciero,  offering  in  return  for  the  right  to  work 


292  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

so  many  acres  of  his  land,  to  "  go  halves  "  with  him  in 
expenses  and  in  profits  —  hence  mediero,  or  "  halver." 

The  colono  (colonist)  is  a  genuine  knight  of  the 
empty  purse,  with  nothing  to  offer  save  his  labour  and 
that  of  his  wife  and  children;  but  that  is  a  great  thing, 
and  he  is  received  with  open  arms  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  Argentine.  The  estanciero 
not  only  grants  him  as  many  acres  of  land  as  he  may 
be  able  to  work  with  his  wife  and  family,  but  lends 
him  cows  for  milk,  horses  for  the  plough,  and  through 
his  almacen  supplies  to  him  on  credit  the  necessary 
implements,  seeds,  and  food,  as  well  as  corrugated  iron 
and  planks  of  wood  for  the  building  of  his  rancho.  It 
should  be  explained  that  the  almacen  on  every  estancia 
is  an  important  institution,  a  sort  of  universal  provider 
for  the  hundreds  of  medieros  and  colonos  who  have 
taken  up  land  on  the  estate,  selling  to  them  all  sorts  of 
commodities  at  a  substantial  profit  to  the  estanciero. 
The  "  colonist "  is  now  expected  to  labour  incessantly 
on  the  land  allotted  to  him,  so  that  he  may  repay  to 
the  almacen  the  pretty  heavy  debt  he  has  contracted 
there,  while  an  agreed  percentage  of  his  crops  will  go 
to  the  owner  of  the  estate. 

These  medieros  and  colonos  include  all  nationali- 
ties, but  are  chiefly  drawn  from  the  Italian  emigrants, 
the  Spaniards  being  more  commonly  tradesmen. 
Everything  looks  couleur  de  rose  to  the  poor  toilers; 
they  set  about  their  task  with  high  hope,  a  new  feel- 
ing of  freedom,  little  recking  that  they  have  tied  them- 
selves to  a  new  serfdom  by  the  bond  of  that  initial 
debt  with  which  they  start.  The  mediero  has  a  better 
chance  than  the  colono  of  "  turning  the  corner  "  soon, 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       293 

and  it  too  often  happens  that  the  latter,  after  two  or 
three  years  of  incessant  labour,  has  no  more  than 
cleared  his  feet,  when  comes  a  bad  harvest,  and  he  is 
back  where  he  was  at  the  beginning.  Withered  are 
his  roses,  poor  fellow.  Disgusted  at  the  result,  and 
hoping  that  a  change  to  some  other  part  of  the  coun- 
try may  turn  out  for  the  better,  he  disposes  of  the  few 
things  he  owns,  quits  his  "  camp,"  and  shifts  to  some 
other  quarter,  perhaps  only  to  repeat  this  chapter  of  his 
history. 

Meanwhile,  it  will  be  seen  the  estanciero  has  had 
another  corner  of  his  estate  brought  into  cultivation, 
its  value  considerably  increased  thereby,  and  the  poor 
Italians  have  spent  their  strength  for  a  bare  subsist- 
ence. That  many  of  them  do  succeed  in  earning  some 
profit,  especially  those  of  the  mediero  class,  and  start- 
ing in  some  other  business,  is  undeniable;  but  the 
roll  of  those  who  have  turned  over  the  soil  of  the  Ar- 
gentine and  brought  it  into  bearing  to  the  great  benefit 
of  its  owners,  and  their  own  non-success  is,  I  am  told, 
beyond  reckoning.  This,  then,  I  submit,  is  no  system 
that  can  endure.  It  carries  its  own  seeds  of  decay. 
So  long  as  the  stream  of  immigration  flows  as  steadily 
as  of  recent  years,  the  system  will  doubtless  continue, 
but  a  time  will  come  when  disappear  it  must,  and  some 
method  of  employment  based  on  a  fairer  distribution 
of  profits,  or  on  adequate  wages,  take  its  place. 

Apart  from  the  ethics  of  the  Argentine  land  system, 
which  ~axe  clearly  open  to  criticism,  one  can  have  noth- 
ing but  praise  for  the  manner  in  which  emigration  is 
officially  encouraged,  and.  the  way  in  which  the  emi- 
grants are  handled  on  arrival  at  the  River  Plate. 


294  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

There  is  a  fine  saying  reported  of  President  Saenz 
Pena  when  he  represented  his  country  at  the  Pan- 
American  Congress  in  Washington  on  the  occasion  of 
the  fourth  centenary  of  the  discovery  of  America.  In 
the  course  of  a  speech  he  was  making,  some  fervid 
Pan-American  thought  it  a  fit  occasion  to  interject  the 
watchword,  "  America  for  the  Americans  "  !  Quick 
as  a  flash  Dr.  Saenz  Pefia  retorted,  "  Yes,  but  Latin 
America  for  humanity !  " 

This  certainly  is  the  spirit  that  informs  the  policy 
of  Argentine  immigration.  A  hearty  welcome  is  given 
to  people  of  all  races,  whose  only  right  of  entry  into 
this  new  land  of  promise  is  the  possession  of  brawny 
muscles  and  the  will  to  work.  Every  week  they  are 
arriving  in  ship-loads,  and  the  manner  in  which  these 
cargoes  of  humanity  are  received  at  the  docks  in 
Buenos  Ayres  and  speedily  transhipped  by  rail  to  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  interior,  according  to  the  demand 
for  brazos,  is  ^one  of  the  most  businesslike  things  the 
visitor  will  have  an  opportunity  of  noting  in  the  pub- 
lic administration.  Ship-load  after  ship-load  of 
Italians,  Spaniards,  Portuguese,  and  other  nationalities 
arrives  and  melts  away,  absorbed  into  the  thirsty  coun- 
try like  water  into  sandy  soil. 

During  our  stay,  a  splendidly  equipped  hostel,  or 
shelter,  was  opened  for  the  emigrants.  Erected  by  the 
riverside  close  to  the  scene  of  their  disembarkation, 
this  building  is  capable  of  sheltering  a  large  number 
of  new-comers.  Sleeping-rooms  fitted  with  wire  mat- 
tresses upon  which  the  emigrants  may  place  their  own 
bedding  (always  the  most  precious  of  their  personal 
possessions)  are  provided  for  the  men,  and  similar 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       295 

accommodation  for  the  women  and  children.  There 
is  no  excuse  for  any  of  them  to  go  unbathed,  lavatories 
specially  fitted  with  showers  being  provided  for  those 
who  care  to  use  them  (the  superintendent  told  me  it 
was  seldom  that  an  emigrant  ventured  on  such  an  ex- 
periment), while  in  the  great  common  dining-room 
they  may  take  their  meals  in  comparative  comfort  and 
can  secure  eatables  at  a  low  rate.  The  accommoda- 
tion, if  I  remember  correctly,  is  free,  and  the  whole 
place  is  so  admirably  clean  that  it  must  come  with 
something  like  a  shock  to  most  of  the  emigrants  who 
pass  through  it,  habituated  as  they  have  been,  almost 
without  exception,  to  dirty  ways  of  life  in  their  native 
lands.  Many  of  the  emigrants  never  see  Buenos 
Ayres  at  all,  as  the  trains  that  take  them  into  the  Camp 
pick  them  up  at  a  short  distance  from  the  vessels  which 
have  borne  them  oversea,  and  at  the  very  doors  of  the 
shelter  where  they  may  have  passed  the  night  of  ar- 
rival. 

Laughter  and  tears  mingle  a  good  deal  in  the  land- 
ing of  these  poor  people  from  the  Old  World.  Hud- 
dled almost  like  cattle  in  the  steerage  of  the  steamers, 
their  condition  at  sea  presents  what  seems  an  unbridg- 
able  abyss  between  their  lives  and  those  of  the  saloon 
passengers.  Day  after  day  I  have  watched  them  sit- 
ting aimlessly  on  deck  in  their  dirty,  faded  clothes,  the 
effluvia  from  the  mass  of  them,  even  tempered  by  the 
sea  breeze,  suggesting  conditions  of  horror  when  they 
"  turned  in  "  at  night,  that  might  recall  the  Black  Hole 
of  Calcutta.  The  captain  assured  me  it  was  not  so 
very  bad,  but  I  never  had  the  stomach  to  prove  it  for 
myself.  Yet,  on  the  morning  of  arrival  at  Buenos 


296  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Ayres,  what  a  transformation!  Girls  who  have 
seemed  the  dirtiest  of  sluts  throughout  the  voyage  step 
down  the  gangway  quite  neatly  attired.  The  married 
Women,  tricked  out  with  little  bits  of  finery,  the  men 
mostly  in  suits  of  black,  with  sombre  soft  hats,  and 
every  Spaniard  armed  with  an  ample  umbrella,  are 
difficult  to  recognise  as  the  slovenly  creatures  one  has 
seen  for  weeks  feeding  out  of  tins  and  using  fingers, 
for  lack  of  knives  and  forks.  But  even  among 
the  emigrants  there  are  many  grades,  and  not  all  are 
able  to  make  this  sudden  transformation,  many  having 
no  more  than  the  soiled  and  shabby  garments  in  which 
they  have  made  their  voyage,  a  little  handkerchief  tied 
at  the  corners  being  a  pathetic  index  of  their  worldly 
gear.  But  even  from  among  these,  there  will  be  some 
that  one  day  shall  bridge  that  awful  gulf  between  the 
steerage  and  saloon,  and  make  a  voyage  home  as  cabin 
passengers  to  advertise  the  magic  Argentine! 

Hope  is_^e^^^va_iling_note  in  the  demeanour  of 
every  newTatch__of  fortune-seekers.  It  shines  bright- 
est, perhaps,  in  the  eyes  of  the  alert  and  wiry  little 
Italians;  the  Spaniards,  also,  step  ashore  with  a  firm 
and  confident  tread,  but  mostly  among  the  Poles,  the 
Bulgars,  and  the  Russians  do  we  see  the  dull  look  of 
something  very  like  despair.  In  discussing  the  char- 
acter of  the  emigrants  with  M.  Huret,  Senor  Alsina, 
a  former  Director  of  the  Emigration  Service,  re- 
marked : 

What  surprises  one  most  in  the  careful  observation  of  these 
people  from  the  four  extremes  of  Europe  is  the  rapidity  of 
their  transformation,  Spaniards  from  Galicia,  brutish  and 
wretched,  sordid  Jews  from  Russia,  lift  up  their  heads  (levan- 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       297 

tan  la  cabeza)  at  the  end  of  a  few  months.  I  have  seen  them 
arrive  bent  and  downcast,  with  all  the  timidity  of  a  dog 
that  has  been  badly  treated,  so  dejected  and  timorous,  indeed, 
that  I  thought  it  necessary  to  engage  some  Russian  students 
to  lecture  them  on  the  dignity  of  humanity  in  general,  and  the 
conditions  of  liberty  which  they  could  enjoy  in  the  Argentine. 
A  few  months  afterwards,  seeing  many  of  them  again,  I  could 
observe  that  they  had  so  entirely  changed  that  they  had  become 
argumentative,  noisy,  and  given  to  discussion. 

The  case  of  the  Armenians  is  in  this  respect  entirely  typical. 
Some  eighteen  years  ago  they  arrived  here  for  the  first  time. 
Becoming  pedlars,  they  travelled  all  over  the  Pampa,  some  with 
"  bundles  "  on  their  backs,  others  pushing  before  them  their 
wares.  Little  by  little  they  made  money,  even  growing  rich. 
Many  of  them  went  in  for  politics,  and  to-day  occupy  positions 
of  influence  in  the  public  life.  Very  active  in  business,  they 
are  in  a  fair  way  to  surpass  the  Italians  in  the  retail  trade. 
Proud  of  their  title  as  free  citizens,  they  refuse  to  sell  their 
vote,  which  is  the  common  practice  among  the  populace,  and 
their  prosperity  is  so  real,  so  positive,  that  the  Armenian  Col- 
ony is  offering  to  the  Argentine  a  monument  which  will  cost 
them  120,000  francs. 

I  am  afraid  that  appearances  are  very  much  inclined 
to  be  deceptive  in  studying  the  faces  of  emigrants. 
Surely  there  are  none  who  can  look  more  dejected  than 
the  Armenians  and  the  Poles,  who  closely  resemble 
each  other  in  facial  appearance,  yet  the  money-making 
potentialities  of  these  sad-faced  emigrants  are  rela- 
tively much  higher  than  those  of  the  merry,  little, 
guitar-strumming  Italians  and  Spaniards. 

On  the  arrival  of  every  new  contingent,  there  is  al- 
ways a  considerable  group  of  friends  awaiting  the 
vessel,  and  fortunate  are  they  who  have  come  out  on 


298  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  initiative  of  some  relative  that  has  gone  before 
and  prepared  the  way.  These  emigrants  of  yesterday, 
who  have  already  come  to  grips  with  fortune  and  won 
the  first  bout,  form  one  of  the  pleasantest  features  of 
the  disembarkations,  as  they  stand  on  the  quayside  in 
their  "  Sunday  best,"  with  their  watch  chains,  tie  pins, 
finger  rings,  and  highly  polished  boots  to  announce  to 
all  the  world  that  they  are  "  getting  on."  This 
friendly  co-operation  is  of  immense  service  to  the  Emi- 
gration Bureau,  and  is  really  a  sounder  sort  of  propa- 
ganda than  the  familiar  widecast  publishing  of  allur- 
ing pictures  of  the  riches  of  the  country  and  the  ease 
with  which  fortunes  may  be  made.  The  emigrant  who 
comes  because  a  brother  or  a  friend  has  already  sub- 
stantially changed  his  condition,  and  will  have  the  ad- 
vice of  that  friend  to  help  him  in  securing  employment, 
is  at  least  on  sure  ground,  and  where  labour  is  in  such 
demand  he  cannot  well  make  a  mistake,  provided  he 
is  willing  to  work. 

In  this  way  have  grown  up  the  distinctive  "  colo- 
nies "  throughout  the  country,  the  majority  of  the 
Russians  making  direct  for  the  neighbourhood  of 
Bahia  Blanca,  where  their  services  as  agricultural  la- 
bourers and  as  craftsmen  are  in  high  demand;  the 
Turks  and  Syrians  concentrating  in  a  district  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  where  they  seem  to  engage  in  every  variety  of 
occupation  in  which  there  is  a  minimum  of  creative 
work  and  the  possibility  of  profiting  as  middlemen  by 
the  labour  of  others.  A  great  many  French  find  their 
way  to  Mendoza,  the  centre  of  the  wine-growing,  in 
which  business  not  a  few  have  become  masters  of  mil- 
lions. The  German  emigration  is  of  more  recent 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       299 

origin,  and  embraces,  like  the  French,  a  superior  class 
of  people,  as  well  as  supplying  a  modicum  to  the  toil- 
ing community.  Although  all  the  emigrants,  save  the 
Spanish,  are  at  first  conditioned  in  their  occupations 
and  their  localities  by  their  ignorance  of  the  native  lan- 
guage, so  that  they  must  needs  go  where  they  find 
their  fellow-countrymen  and  more  or  less  follow  the 
pursuits  in  which  these  are  engaged,  they  speedily  pick 
up  the  language,  and  once  acclimatised  and  furnished 
with  the  means  of  universal  intercourse,  they  begin 
to  look  around,  weigh  up  the  possibilities  of  the  coun- 
try, and  strike  out  their  independent  courses.  In  this 
movement,  the  British  have  practically  no  part  what- 
ever, and  with  the  exceptions  of  the  scanty  Irish  emi- 
gration of  past  years  and  the  Welsh  colony  settled, 
with  very  equivocal  success,  on  the  River  Chubut  some 
twenty  years  ago,  the  annals  of  the  British  in  the  Ar- 
gentine present  no  parallel  whatever  to  those  of  the 
other  European  nations. 

When  we  talk  of  Argentine  emigration,  we  refer 
chiefly  to  the  Italian  and  the  Spanish,  though  the  Basque 
provinces  of  France  and  Spain  have  probably  sup- 
plied the  very  finest  element  of  foreign  blood  in  the 
Argentine  nation  to-day.  Italy  is  sending  from  eighty 
to  a  hundred  thousand  of  her  sturdy  sons  to  swell  the 
Argentine  population  every  year.  The  newcomers 
from  Italy  each  year  number  about  200,000,  but  in 
these  later  years  there  has  been  a  very  considerable 
movement  towards  repatriation  among  the  Italians 
and  also  among  the  Spaniards,  so  that  there  is  an  off- 
set of  at  least  50  per  cent,  for  re-emigration.  The 
Italian  who  does  not  determine  to  make  his  home  in 


300  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  Argentine  is  quickly  satisfied  with  a  comparatively 
small  amount  of  savings.  Once  he  has  netted  from 
$1000  to  $2500,  he  considers  himself  a  man  of  in- 
dependent means,  and  is  apt  to  return  to  his  native  vil- 
lage with  his  tiny  fortune,  which  will  enable  him  there 
to  live  far  more  comfortably  than  he  has  been  exist- 
ing in  the  Argentine,  and  to  enjoy  a  life  of  comparative 
leisure.  The  call  of  the  Homeland  is  always  very 
strong  to  the  Italian,  and  if  he  acquires  his  little  for- 
tune quickly,  before  his  family  have  become  thoroughly 
Argentine  in  character  and  sentiment,  he  will  almost 
surely  go  back.  The  hundreds  of  thousands  of  his 
race  who  are  fixed  and  rooted  in  the  Republic  are  they 
who,  either  through  superior  fortune  have  come  to 
hold  such  a  stake  in  the  land,  or  from  longer  delay  in 
"  turning  the  corner  "  and  the  influence  of  their  chil- 
dren, have  become  habituated  to  their  new  environ- 
ment. 

The  quickest  fortunes,  the  easiest  gained  wealth, 
assuredly  do  not  come  to  those  who  take  up  the  life 
of  the  colono  or  the  mediero,  as  above  described,  for 
there  are  innumerable  other  ways  in  which  money  cam 
be  made  more  readily,  and  those  who  engage  in  shop- 
keeping —  always  a  superior  class  to  the  tillers  of  the 
soil,  as  they  require  some  little  capital  for  a  start  — 
as  well  as  the  many  Spaniards  who  enter  the  already 
established  business  houses,  are  in  more  immediate 
touch  with  money-making  possibilities  than  the 
braceros.  It  is  always  thus,  that  they  who  are  of  least 
use  in  the  economical  development  of  the  country 
should  be  most  speedily  rewarded. 

I  heard  of  an  Italian  waiter,  who  arrived  in  Buenos 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       301 

Ayres  some  time  in  November  of  1911  and  immedi- 
ately went  on  to  Mar  del  Plata,  the  fashionable  sea- 
side resort,  where  he  readily  secured  a  situation  in  one 
of  the  hotels.  In  one  month  he  netted  a  thousand 
pesos  in  "  tips,"  and  with  this  vast  sum  ($420)  he 
incontinently  returned  to  his  native  country  in  order 
to  purchase  a  piece  of  land  and  set  up  as  a  small 
farmer !  A  coachman,  also  an  Italian,  whose  services 
I  occasionally  employed  during  our  stay  in  Buenos 
Ayres,  informed  me  that  he  was  making  a  clear  profit 
of  600  pesos  (or  $252)  per  month.  The  coach,  a 
very  handsome  one,  and  the  horse,  a  splendid  animal, 
were  his  own  property,  and  so  careful  was  he  of  his 
coach  that  he  did  not  care  to  bring  it  out  on  very  sunny 
days,  lest  the  upholstery  might  fade,  while  he  disliked 
driving  on  very  wet  days,  so  that  he  suited  his  own 
convenience  as  to  the  hours  and  days  of  work! 
Withal,  he  was  speedily  acquiring  a  competence.  He 
assured  me  he  drank  as  good  wine  as  he  got  at  home, 
and  if  he  did  not  eat  so  well,  it  was  because  nobody 
did  in  the  Argentine,  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  getting 
good  food  at  reasonable  prices.  He  also-  had  been  a 
waiter,  but  evidently  had  his  eye  on  a  higher  mark  than 
his  compatriot  who  hastened  back  from  Mar  del 
Plata  with  his  first  month's  gratuities. 

I  do  not  doubt  that  if  one  had  gone  about,  note- 
book in  hand,  collecting  experiences  from  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  people  who  had  emigrated  to  the  coun- 
try, no  end  of  "human  interest"  stories  could  have 
been  obtained.  Such  as  I  came  by,  however,  were  the 
fruit  of  casual  conversations,  and  the  absence  of  the 
British  and  North  Americans  from  the  emigration 


302  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

movement  was  probably  the  reason  why  I  did  not  study 
it  in  more  than  its  broadest  aspects.  To  follow  it  here 
in  detail  would  involve  so  much  in  the  way  of  com- 
parative statistics,  that  I  make  no  apology  for  touch- 
ing the  subject  in  the  most  sketchy,  but  I  hope  not 
unsuggestive,  manner.  I  did  receive,  after  leaving 
Buenos  Ayres,  some  copies  of  the  Herald  containing  a 
long  and  interesting  correspondence,  originated  by  an 
Englishman  in  Buenos  Ayres,  entitled  "  Is  Argentina 
as  Bright  as  it  is  Painted?"  Some  excellent  letters 
were  written  by  Britishers  while  the  correspondence 
continued,  and  although  the  Mr.  Q's  and  Mr.  F's  could 
not  allow  the  occasion  to  pass  without  casting  a  stone 
at  the  unworthy  land  of  their  birth,  the  whole  weight 
of  opinion  was  in  tune  with  what  I  have  written.  If 
anything,  most  of  the  writers  went  further,  and  some 
even  piously  called  upon  the  Almighty  to  protect  the 
wretched  English  workman  whose  lot  it  was  to  live  in 
such  places  as  Bahia  Blanca  and  Rosario.  Personally, 
I  must  confess  that  I  have  seen  worse  places  to  live  in 
than  Rosario,  and  even  considerably  worse  than  Bahia 
Blanca.  I  have  been  in  Antofagasta ! 

But  enough  of  the  British  in  this  connection,  for 
they  certainly  do  not  amount  to  anything  of  real  con- 
sequence in  the  sum  total  of  Argentine  immigration, 
the  Americans  to  still  less.*  What  is  to  be  noticed, 

*  From  the  year  1857  to  1912  inclusive  4,248,355  persons  of  all 
classes  entered  the  Argentine.  The  nationalities  represented  were 
as  follows:  Italians,  2,133,508;  Spaniards,  1,298,122;  French,  206,- 
912;  Russians,  136,659;  Syrians,  109,234;  Austrians,  80,736;  Germans, 
55,068;  Britons,  51,660;  Swiss,  31,624;  Belgians,  22,186;  Portuguese, 
21,378;  Danes,  7,686;  Dutch,  7,120;  N.  Americans,  5,509;  Swedes, 
1,702;  Others,  79,251.  During  the  year  1912  the  total  number  of  new- 
comers was  323,403,  comprising  Italians,  165,662;  Spaniards,  80,583; 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       303 

however,  is  a  very  distinct  forward  movement  among 
the  Germans.  The  German  has  come  rather  late  in  the 
day  to  discover  the  Britisher  very  thoroughly  estab- 
lished in  all  branches  of  commerce  throughout  the  Re- 
public. But,  undismayed,  the  Germanjias  set  him- 
self to  the  task  of  undermining  Brrtisji  jupremac^  lay- 
ing hTs"prans^fb~^pture  a  Targe  share  of  future  busi- 
ness. There  is,  of  course,  no  comparison  in  sheer  bulk 
between  the  German  and  the  Italian  immigration,  as 
the  number  of  Germans  arriving  in  the  Argentine  in 
1912  was  only  4,337,  (to  which  we  might  add  6,545 
Austrians)  against  165,662  Italians.  But  in  the 
smaller  Teutonic  group  lay  greater  money-making  pos- 
sibilities than  in  the  Latin  horde. 

These  Germans  represent  all  classes  of  the  com- 
munity; there  are  quite  a  few  titled  Teutons  engaged 
in  business  in  Buenos  Ayres  to-day.  They  are  de- 
veloping their  banking  connection  throughout  the  Re- 
public with  great  energy;  German  manufacturers  are 
establishing  branches  everywhere;  German  clerks  are 
flooding  into  all  sorts  of  businesses,  their  superior 
working  qualities  to  the  Spaniard,  their  readiness  to 
accept  the  lowest  wages  that  will  support  an  existence, 
and  their  ability  to  acquire  speedily  the  language  of 
the  country,  being  all  sound  reasons  for  the  ready  de- 
Russians,  20,832;  Syrians,  19,792;  Austrians,  6,545;  French,  5,180;  Por- 
tuguese, 4,959;  Germans,  4,337;  Britons,  3,134;  Danes,  1,316;  Swiss, 
1,005;  N.  Americans,  499;  Belgians,  405;  Dutch,  274;  Swedes,  94;  Oth- 
ers, 8,786.  While  the  repatriation  of  hundreds  of  thousands  would 
reduce  these  figures  greatly,  the  increase  by  births  in  the  country, 
which  cannot  readily  be  traced,  is  an  important  countervailing  item. 
The  Argentine  authorities  naturally  set  great  store  on  this,  and  even 
state  at  times  the  number  of  "  women  of  child-bearing  age "  entering 
the  country. 


304  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

mand  for  their  services.  The  competition  of  these 
German  clerks  will  soon  change  the  complexion  of  the 
office  staffs  of  the  railways,  for  they  are  even  sup- 
planting the  British  employees,  and,  if  the  cold  truth 
must  be  told,  they  are  really  better  employees.  One 
seldom  meets  a  German  who  cannot  at  least  contrive 
to  make  himself  understood  in  English,  and  who,  al- 
though seldom  speaking  the  Spanish  language  with 
grace  or  correct  pronunciation,  will  not  in  a  few  months 
be  able  to  converse  in  it  with  a  fair  degree  of  fluency. 
In  addition  to  those  different  classes  of  Teutonic  in- 
vaders come  the  hand-workers  —  engineers,  carpen- 
ters, builders,  agricultural  labourers.  In  considerable 
numbers  these  work  people,  who  share  the  ability  of 
their  compatriots  in  the  acquiring  of  languages,  are 
filtering  all  over  the  Argentine  and  in  certain  districts 
of  the  southwest,  especially  around  the  celebrated  Lake 
Nahuel  Huapi,  some  thirteen  hundred  miles  distant 
from  the  capital,  there  are  entire  settlements  of  Ger- 
man farmers,  with  their  native  school-teachers  and 
Protestant  missionaries.  In  fine,  the  Germanising  of 
the  Argentine  has  begun,  and  if  it  is  still  far  from  at- 
taining the  dimensions  it  has  already  assumed  in  Chili, 
I  do  not  doubt  that  a  day  is  coming  when  the  German 
will  have  ousted  the  British,  the  French,  and  the 
Italian  from  their  present  supremacy  in  their  respec- 
tive fields,  although  never  likely  to  compete  with 
Britain  or  France  in  the  matter  of  invested  capital. 
At  the  time  of  writing,  it  is  evident  that  there  is  a  fur- 
ther movement  to  encourage  German  enterprise  in  the 
Argentine.  I  read  in  the  London  Times  this  morning 
that  the  Kaiser's  brother,  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia,  ac- 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       305 

companied  by  his  Princess  and  suite,  are  sailing  on  an 
official  visit  to  the  Republic  in  one  of  the  fine  new 
passenger  steamers  with  which  the  Germans  are  suc- 
cessfully competing  against  the  British  lines  for  South 
Atlantic  trade. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  although  I  have  emphasised 
the  fact  that  the  Italian  immigration  is  essentially  a 
movement  of  unskilled  labour,  that  it  is  exclusively  so. 
For  the  Argentine  offers  to  the  observer  a  very  re- 
markable lesson  in  the  industrial  progress  of  Italy, 
which  may  entirely  escape  him  in  his  travels  in  Italy 
itself.  To  encounter  at  every  step,  as  one  does 
wherever  one  goes  throughout  the  Argentine,  the  most 
persistent  evidences  of  Italian  enterprise  in  every 
~Branch  of  commerce,  is  to  discover  the  Italian  in  an 
entirely  new  light.  Most  of  us  are  in  the  habit  of 
going  to  Italy  to  look  at  old  things,  to  revel  in  the 
glories  of  her  past,  and  are  apt  to  come  #way  from 
Rome,  or  Florence,  or  Venice,  and  especially  from 
Naples,  with  an  impression  of  bygone  grandeur  and 
lingering  poverty.  It  is  true  that  we  must  set  against 
this  the  evidence  of  her  prosperity  and  modern  activity, 
which  we  find  in  Milan  and  in  Turin;  but,  on  the  whole, 
our  popular  notion  of  Italy  is  that  of  a  country  living 
mainly  on  its  past. 

The  Italian  in  the  Argentine  will  speedily  dispel  this. 
Not  only  does  he  supply  the  strong  arms  that  are  till- 
ing the  soil  of  countless  leagues,  but  he  maintains  many 
of  the  great  importing  establishments  in  Buenos  Ayres 
and  the  principal  towns.  Italian  engineering  agencies 
and  workshops  abound.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
splendid  motor  cars  that  crowd  the  streets  of  the  capi- 


3o6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tal  hail  from  Italy.  Some  of  the  finest  chemists'  estab- 
lishments are  Italian.  Not  only  are  Italian  workmen 
vastly  in  the  majority  on  all  building  operations,  but 
very  often  Italian  brains  are  directing  the  whole  un- 
dertaking; Italian  contractors  are  paving  the  streets. 
In  short,  Italy  stands  forth  in  the  life  of  the  Argentine 
to-day  as  a  magnificent  industrial  and  commercial 
force,  supported  by  the  widespreading  base  of  Italian 
emigrant  labour. 

There  is  also  a  very  large  traffic  between  the  two 
countries  in  casual  labour,  shiploads  of  Italians  com- 
ing out  each  year  for  the  harvest  season  —  during 
which  wages  jump  up  from  40  to  50  pesos  a  month  to 
5  or  6  pesos  a  day  —  and  return  home  immediately 
on  its  conclusion.  The  Italian  steamers  (the  fastest 
that  ply  between  Europe  and  South  America,  some  of 
them  doing  the  journey  from  Buenos  Ayres  to  Genoa 
in  twelve  days,  whereas  the  average  of  the  English 
mail  steamer  from  the  River  Plate  to  London  or  Liver- 
pool takes  nineteen  to  twenty-one  days)  provide  spe- 
cial facilities  for  the  shipment  of  these  labourers  at 
a  very  low  head  rate.  To  the  remarkable  return 
movement  among  Italian  emigrants,  on  which  I  have 
already  touched,  this  large  element  of  casual  labour 
has  contributed  not  a  little. 

As  regards  the  Spanish  emigrant,  I  had  many  dis- 
cussions with  Spaniards  settled  in  the  Argentine,  from 
which  I  gained  a  good  deal  more  information  than  I 
had  ever  been  able  to  acquire  from  any  printed  source. 
One  of  these  gentlemen  in  particular  had  studied  the 
question  in  five  or  six  of  the  republics,  and  was  en- 
gaged upon  a  book  for  circulation  among  his  country- 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       307 

men  at  home,  putting  the  matter  in  a  new  light.  In 
his  estimation,  the  Argentine  conditions  represent  an 
improvement  for  only  the  lowest  class  of  Spaniard. 
This  class  of  Spaniard  I  remember  being  very  fully 
described  in  a  leading  article  in  La  Prensa.  His  no- 
tions of  thrift  were  there  illustrated  by  his  habit,  when 
in  his  native  country,  of  journeying  about  the  country- 
side bare-footed,  with  his  boots  and  stockings  hung 
around  his  neck.  When  he  approaches  a  village,  he 
pauses  by  the  roadside  to  put  on  his  stockings  and 
boots,  and  so  shod  traverses  the  village;  but  as  soon  as 
he  has  emerged  on  the  highway  again,  he  removes 
them  and  continues  his  journey  with  them  around  his 
neck  once  more !  Such  a  custom  touches  the  zero  of 
social  comfort  and  those  habituated  to  it  could  scarcely 
fail  to  do  better  in  almost  any  other  country  in  the 
world. 

According  to  my  Spanish  friend,  such  of  his  coun- 
trymen immediately  become  enthusiasts  for  the  new 
land,  and  not  only  being  able  to  go  about  permanently 
with  their  boots  and  stockings,  but  perhaps  to  buy  a 
white  collar  for  themselves  and  even  a  pair  of  silk 
stockings  for  their  wives,  feel  they  have  suddenly  made 
a  magical  transition  into  the  very  lap  of  luxury.  But 
for  the  craftsmen,  the  village  carpenter,  the  black- 
smith, the  modest  tradesmen,  he  assured  me  the  change 
was  not  always  for  the  better.  Spaniards  of  these 
classes  can,  thanks  to  the  cheapness  of  commodities 
in  their  native  country,  and  despite  the  lowness  of 
wages,  secure  infinitely  better  household  accommoda- 
tion, and  will  eat  better  food,  drink  better  wine,  and 
altogether  live  a  less  strenuous  and  more  satisfactory 


308  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

existence,  than  the  majority,  at  least,  will  be  doomed 
to  maintain  in  the  Argentine.  As  to  all  this,  I  can  speak 
with  no  exact  knowledge,  and  I  do  no  more  than  report 
the  opinion  of  a  Spanish  gentleman,  confirmed  to  me, 
I  may  add,  by  several  others  of  his  race  who  ought  to 
have  been  in  positions  to  judge. 

The  gentleman  in  question  was  probably  somewhat 
prejudiced,  as  he  was  a  patriotic  Spaniard,  fond  of 
elaborating  his  theory  that  Spain  to-day  had  lost  her 
head  over  the  Argentine  and  was  hastening  her  decay  by 
orienting  her  literature  and  her  journalism  towards  the 
lucrative  market  of  South  America  instead  of  towards 
purely  Spanish  ideals.  Looking  to  South  America  as 
a  land  of  employment  for  her  children,  as  in  the  past 
her  kings  had  looked  to  it  to  fill  their  coffers,  she  was 
guilty  of  a  crowning  folly.  If  the  energy  she  is  pour- 
ing into  South  America  were  properly  utilised  at  home, 
it  would  return  far  greater  profit  to  the  nation  and  the 
individual.  Such,  at  least,  was  his  line  of  reasoning, 
and  I  more  than  half  suspect  it  was  well  based  in 
fact. 

And  withal,  from  what  I  could  gather,  in  the  annals 
of  Argentine  immigration,  the  most  interesting  chap- 
ter that  might  be  written  would  describe  the  activities 
and  achievements  of  the  Basques.  This  splendid  race 
of  people  who  seem  to  unite  the  finest  qualities  of  the 
French  and  the  Spanish,  have  distinguished  themselves 
above  all  others  in  the  making  of  modern  Argentine. 
The  geographical  position  of  their  homeland,  enabling 
them  to  acquire,  in  addition  to  their  own  most  difficult 
language  —  which  polyglot  Borrow  found  his  hardest 
nut  to  crack  —  both  French  and  Spanish,  are  peculiarly 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       309 

adapted  for  making  their  way  in  Latin  America.  But 
apart  from  the  language  question,  their  personal  char- 
acteristics, in  which  industry  joins  with  intelligence  and 
imagination,  would  inevitably  carry  them  to  success. 
Th~ey  stand  to  ^outh  American  colonisation  as  the  Scot 
to  British  Empire-making,  and  the  peculiar  custom  of 
their  country,  whereby  the  eldest  son  inherits  all  the 
family  goods  and  remains  at  home  to  maintain  the 
family  succession,  while  the  younger  sons  have  to  fare 
forth  into  the  world  to  seek  their  fortunes,  marks  them 
out  for  colonists. 

My  acquaintance  with  the  Basques  was  limited  to 
one  family  only  —  a  wonderful  family;  they  are 
French  Basques,  and  some  fifteen  or  sixteen  brothers 
and  cousins  are  united  in  a  great  business,  which  has 
important  warehouses  and  distributing  centres  in  every 
large  town  along  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Coasts  of 
South  America,  as  well  as  in  many  of  the  business 
centres  of  the  interior.  But  for  a  typical  story  of  the 
Basques,  I  turn  to  the  pages  <of  M.  Huret  and  translate 
what  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  little  romances  of 
Argentine  emigration: 

I  wish  to  relate  in  some  detail  the  story  of  one  of  these 
French  Basques  (perhaps  the  most  celebrated  of  them  all),  as 
I  heard  it  from  one  of  his  sons.  I  admire  and  sympathise  with 
the  pride  of  this  intelligent  plebeian  in  a  country  where  so  many 
people  think  of  little  more  than  how  to  make  others  believe  in 
the  aristocracy  of  their  blood,  as  if  the  most  beautiful  and  the 
noblest  qualities  of  "  aristocratic "  blood  did  not  potentially 
exist  in  the  blood  of  the  people! 

Pedro  Luro  was  born  in  1820  in  the  little  town  of  Ga- 
marthe,  and  in  1837  be  arrived  at  Buenos  Ayres  with  a  few 


3io  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

francs  in  his  pocket.  Entering  as  a  labourer  in  a  saladero 
(beef  salting  establishment),  he  contrived  to  save  enough  to 
contemplate  matrimony,  but  suffered  the  loss  of  his  little  sav- 
ings by  robbery.  He  applied  himself  with  new  energy  to 
work;  purchasing  a  horse  and  a  tilt  cart,  he  converted  the 
latter  into  an  omnibus,  and  with  himself  as  driver  plied  between 
the  Plaza  Montserrat  and  the  suburb  of  Barracas. 

He  then  married  a  countrywoman,  Senorita  Pradere,  a  rela- 
tive of  his  own,  and  with  one  of  her  brothers  founded  an 
almacen  (general  store)  at  Dolores,  some  three  hundred  kilo- 
metres to  the  south.  But  soon  this  store  did  not  suffice  for 
his  activity,  and  leaving  his  wife  and  her  brother  in  charge  of 
it,  he  scoured  the  Pampa  for  cattle,  wool  and  hides.  Later  on, 
he  made  a  proposal  to  a  neighbouring  estanciero  whom  he  saw 
planting  trees  on  his  ground,  and  effected  a  contract  with  him, 
the  conditions  of  which  are  famous  still  in  the  Argentine. 
Luro  was  to  plant  as  many  trees  as  he  liked  on  two  hundred 
hectdreas  of  land,  which  the  estanciero  was  to  place  at  his  dis- 
posal, and  was  to  be  paid  for  the  work  at  the  rate  of  four 
centimes  for  each  common  tree  and  twenty-five  for  each  fruit 
tree  of  which  the  fruit  contained  stones. 

Calling  to  his  aid  a  number  of  his  fellow  Basques,  at  the 
end  of  five  years,  Pedro  Luro  had  planted  so  many  trees  on 
these  two  hundred  hectareas  that  the  proprietor  owed  him  a 
sum  not  only  superior  to  the  value  of  the  ground  planted,  but 
of  the  whole  five  thousand  hectareas  composing  his  estancia 
(land  was  sold  at  that  time  in  this  district  at  5,000  francs  per 
league).  The  estanciero  did  not  care  to  pay  Luro,  with  the 
result  that  the  astute  Basque  started  an  action  at  law  and 
converted  himself  into  the  proprietor  of  the  5,000  hectareas. 

About  the  year  1840,  the  southern  part  of  the  province  of 
Buenos  Ayres  was  still  almost  desert,  the  land  of  small  value. 
These  were  the  times  of  the  Rosas  tyranny,  and  incessant  revo- 
lutions. All  around  the  abandoned  estancias  dogs  had  returned 


1 


FAMILIAR  SCENES  ON  AN  "ESTANCIA." 

In  the  upper  picture,  a  "  Bebedero,"  or  drinking-place  for  the  cattle  ;  in  the  lower,  a 
flock  of  sheep  brought  in  for  shearing.  The  windmill  pumps  seen  in  both  illustrations 
are  the  commonest  objects  of  Argentine  landscape. 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE      311 

to  a  state  of  savagery,  and  cattle  wandered  free  in  innumerable 
herds  across  these  immense  spaces.  It  happened  that  Luro 
was  assisting  at  a  batida  (battue)  of  these  animals,  rendered 
mad  by  being  entangled  in  the  lassos  and  pricked  with  knives 
in  the  hocks.  Pondering  over  the  value  of  all  that  flesh  and 
fat  wasted,  for  it  was  then  the  custom  merely  to  secure  the  skin 
of  the  animal  and  leave  its  body  to  decay,  the  idea  occurred  to 
buy  'from  the  land-owner  all  the  animals  of  the  class  that  were 
thus  to  be  hunted  and  killed,  at  the  rate  of  ten  pesos  of  the  old 
Argentine  money,  equivalent  to  little  more  than  one  peso  of  the 
present  currency.  The  proprietor  was  highly  amused  at  the 
suggestion.  "  I  quite  believe  I  will  accept,"  he  exclaimed, 
laughing,  "  but  do  you  really  think  it  would  be  good  business?  " 

It  was  with  the  only  system  of  capture  known  to  the 
gauchos,  that  is  to  say  the  lasso  and  the  bolas  (three  balls  at- 
tached by  long  leather  thongs,  which,  thrown  with  great  dex- 
terity at  the  legs  of  an  animal,  entangle  these  and  bring  it  to 
the  ground),  necessitating  months  and  an  enormous  number  of 
men,  that  he  would  be  able  to  bring  some  thousands  of  cattle 
—  and  in  what  sad  state  —  to  the  salting  factory. 

All  the  same,  Luro  insisted  with  perfect  coolness,  and  the 
contract  was  signed. 

Now  the  tactics  conceived  by  the  intelligent  Basque  were 
as  follow:  He  began  by  prohibiting  the  gauchos  from  scour- 
ing the  country  in  cavalcades.  During  three  months,  only  two 
men  on  horseback,  going  slowly,  were  allowed  to  wander  about 
the  pasture  ground  of  these  wild  cattle.  Little  by  little  the 
animals  became  accustomed  to  the  sight  of  them  and  did  not 
fly  away  when  they  approached.  When  some  hundreds  of 
cattle  had  thus  been  domesticated,  they  were  taken  farther 
away,  where  others  were  still  in  a  wild  state,  and  these  in  turn 
were  easily  reduced  to  the  tameness  of  the  first. 

In  batches  of  five  hundred  to  a  thousand,  Luro  was  soon 
able  to  herd  the  cattle  direct  to  the  salting  factories,  where 
he  sold  them  at  15,  2O,  25,  even  30  francs  each.  At  the  end 


3i2  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

of  a  year,  he  had  thus  secured  no  fewer  than  35,000  head  of 
cattle.  He  had  made  himself  rich,  and  the  proprietor  of  the 
estancia  had  received  from  him  at  one  stroke  70,000  francs, 
which  he  had  never  expected,  remaining  enchanted  with  his 
transaction. 

In  1862,  Pedro  Luro  went  still  further  afield,  beyond  Bahia 
Blanca,  whose  fort  at  that  time  constituted  the  frontier  against 
the  Indians.  He  was  delayed  for  some  time  on  the  banks  of 
the  River  Colorado,  owing  to  the  Indians  having  robbed  him 
of  his  horses.  Meanwhile,  exploring  the  valley  of  the  river, 
he  quickly  grasped  the  potentialities  of  the  district.  Returning 
to  Buenos  Ayres,  he  secured  an  interview  with  General  Mitre, 
to  whom  he  proposed  to  buy  from  the  State  100  square  leagues 
of  land  (250,000  hectareas)  at  the  rate  of  1,000  francs  per 
league,  with  a  view  to  founding  a  colony  of  three  hundred 
Basques  in  that  region. 

His  scheme  apparently  approved  by  the  President,  he  then 
set  sail  for  Navarra  Baja  in  Spain,  where  he  recruited  some 
fifty  families,  with  whom  he  returned  to  the  Argentine.  But 
the  Government,  while  agreeing  to  the  sale  of  land,  would  not, 
for  some  unknown  reason,  permit  the  founding  of  the  colony, 
so  the  Basques  were  spread  over  the  land  of  their  compatriot. 
Many  of  them,  or  their  descendants,  are  to-day  millionaires, 
while  the  land  bought  at  the  1,000  francs  the  league  is  valued 
now  at  200  francs  the  hectarea,  or  say  500,000  francs  per 
league. 

Meanwhile,  Pedro  Luro  continued  his  active  commerce  in 
skins  and  wool.  Ere  long  he  had  constructed  the  largest  cur- 
ing factory  in  all  the  basin  of  the  River  Plate,  expending 
millions  of  francs  on  it.  Then  he  set  himself  to  the  exploita- 
tion of  the  bathing  station  of  Mar  del  Plata,  which  had  been 
founded  by  Senor  Peralta  Ramos,  one  of  the  most  fortunate 
of  speculations,  from  which  his  heirs,  continuing  his  work 
there,  have  benefited  immensely.  At  his  death  he  left  to  his 


THE  EMIGRANT  IN  LIGHT  AND  SHADE       313 

fourteen  children  375,000  hectareas  of  land,   300,000  sheep, 
and  150,000  cattle,  then  valued  at  40,000,000  francs. 

Pedro  Luro  was  a  Frenchman  who  did  honour  to  his  coun- 
try by  his  exceptional  qualities,  his  spirited  initiative,  valour, 
endurance,  and  business  intelligence.  He  took  to  the  Argen- 
tine more  than  2,000  of  his  fellow  Basques,  whom  he  employed 
in  his  many  agricultural  and  industrial  establishments,  provid- 
ing them  with  cattle,  letting  land  to  them  cheaply,  lending 
them  money.  Almost  all  of  these  have  made  their  fortunes. 
With  Luro  disappeared  one  of  those  types  that  are  almost 
legendary,  and  without  doubt  the  most  famous  colonist  of  the 
epic  period  of  Argentine  immigration. 

Here,  then,  is  as  fascinating  a  story  as  we  shall  find 
in  the  annals  of  colonisation,  and  so  eminent  in  the  life 
of  the  Argentine  are  the  descendants  of  Pedro  Luro 
to-day  that  the  story  of  their  origin  and  the  achieve- 
ments of  their  progenitor  would  form  a  splendid  sub- 
ject for  some  native  writer,  were  not  the  Argentine 
authors  too  busy  imitating  European  models  to  lend 
themselves  to  the  simple  narration  of  such  splendid 
life-histories  as  the  making  of  the  Argentine  presents. 
For  the  passage  I  have  quoted  from  M.  Huret  is  no 
more  than  the  prelude  to  a  romance  which  is  likely  yet 
to  see  its  final  issue  in  the  founding  of  a  great  and 
prosperous  town  at  the  mouth  of  the  River  Colorado 
in  the  Bay  of  San  Bias,  southward  of  Bahia  Blanca. 
The  Luros  are  the  lords  of  all  the  land  in  that  region, 
and  I  recall  the  interest  with  which  I  read  a  series  of 
somewhat  highly  coloured  articles  by  Mr.  A.  G.  Hales, 
the  Anglo-Australian  journalist,  then  attached  to  the 
staff  of  the  Buenos  Ayres  Standard,  who,  in  the  latter 
part  of  1912,  made  a  journey  on  horseback  through 


3H  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

that  district.  He  pictured  the  coming  of  a  day  when 
ships  would  sail  from  the  city  of  San  Bias  laden  with 
wines  for  the  tables  of  European  epicures,  and  no  end 
of  other  wonders  that  would  come  to  pass  in  the  val- 
ley of  the  River  Colorado,  which  fifty  years  ago  the 
shrewd  Pedro  Luro  had  secured  for  his  descendants 
at  so  small  an  outlay.  At  the  present  moment,  there 
is  no  railway  within  150  miles  of  San  Bias,  and  I  sup- 
pose there  is  no  more  than  a  paper  plan  of  the  future 
city,  lying  somewhere  in  the  estate  office  of  the  Luros, 
and  no  ships  cast  anchor  in  its  bay,  but  there  was  a  time 
when  Buenos  Ayres  itself,  and  not  so  many  years  ago 
Bahia  Blanca,  meant  no  more  to  the  world  than  a  name 
on  a  map,  and  who  shall  say  what  dreams  may  not 
come  true? 


CHAPTER  XVI 

LIFE  IN  THE   "  CAMP  "  AND  THE   PROVINCIAL  TOWNS 

To  the  European  imagination,  the  Argentine  gaucha 
typifies  the  rural  life  of  the  country.  And  a  fine  figure 
he  cuts  in  his  showy  poncho  (a  shawl  with  a  slit  in  the 
centre  to  thrust  the  head  through) ,  the  graceful  folds 
of  it,  with  fringed  edges  and  embroidery,  falling  as 
low  as  his  top-boots  with  their  jingling  spurs.  On  his 
head  he  wears  any  variety  of  soft  felt  hat,  but  never 
the  "  Panama  hat  "  of  popular  imagination.  He  is 
more  inclined  to  cultivate  a  beard  and  fierce  moustache 
than  to  shave,  and  above  his  poncho,  which  covers  a 
complete  suit  of  "  store  "  clothes,  he  usually  wears  a 
black  or  white  silk  handkerchief  tied  loosely  around 
his  neck.  On  horseback,  an  admirable  figure,  the 
poncho  serves  also  as  partial  covering  for  his  steed, 
which  he  rides  with  unrivalled  grace  and  confidence. 

He  has^  a^smiLfor-  -music,  too,  this  rough  and  some- 
what villainous-looking  knight  of  the  Pampa.  The 
guitar  is  his  favourite  instrument,  and  he  is  no  gaucho 
who  cannot  strum  a  tune  thereon,  or  improvise  some 
lines  of  verse,  the  old  Spanish  custom  of  singing  a 
couplet  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  guitar  still  retain- 
ing high  favour  in  the  Argentine  Camp,  to  such  an 
extent,  indeed,  that  a  weekly  paper,  La  Pampa  Argen- 
tina, exists  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  collect  and 
circulate  the  latest  efforts  of  the  copllstas  and  reprint 
famous  couplets  of  the  past.  His  sports,  too,  are  ren- 

3*5 


316  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

dered  picturesque  by  the  part  which  his  horse,  almost 
inseparable  from  himself,  performs  in  them. 

An  agreeable  sense  of  old-fashioned  courtesy  still 
clings  to  him,  and  while  I  fear  his  morals  will  not  bear 
too  close  an  inspection,  nor  are  his  habits  of  life  quite 
as  cleanly  as  domestic  legislation  has  contrived  to  make 
those  of  most  European  and  North  American  people, 
the  gaucho  is  by  no  means  unlikable,  although  I  never 
felt  quite  so  kindly  towards  him  in  the  flesh  as  I  have 
done  imaginatively  through  the  pages  of  Mr.  Cun- 
ninghame-Graham  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Hudson.  For  all 
his^courtesies,  his  nature  retains  much  of  the  old  Span- 
ishcruelty.  To  see  him  bury  his  spurs  in  the  flanks  of 
hisTTorse  with  a  vicious  dig,  and  pull  the  animal  up  on 
his  haunches  by  throwing  his  whole  weight  backwards 
on  the  reins,  that  are  fixed  to  a  long  and  brutal  curb 
bit,  is  not  a  sight  that  makes  you  long  to  go  up  and  take 
him  by  the  hand  as  a  man  and  a  brother. 

His  origin  is  thejnixture  of  Spanish  and  Indian 
blood,  in  which  it  is  not  improbable  that  some  of  the 
worser  qualities  of  both  races  may  have  been  retained, 
along  with  a  curious  strain  of  sentimentality.  That 
he  is  a  veritable  devil  of  cruelty  I  cannot  assert  from 
anything  I  have  witnessed,  but  from  much  that  I  have 
read  and  heard  from  eye-witnesses,  he  seems  no  person 
to  quarrel  with.  "  A  merciful  man  is  merciful  to  his 
beast."  If  this  be  any  true  test,  then  the  gaucho  is  not 
a  merciful  man.  One  of  the  most  disgusting  per- 
formances it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to  witness  was  one  of 
a  series  widely  advertised  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and  patron- 
ised by  the  Spaniards  and  natives  with  high  approval. 
It  took  place  in  the  grounds  of  the  Sports  Club,  near 


THE  "  CAMP  J)  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       317 

Palermo,  and  consisted  of  exhibitions  of  gauchos 
breaking  in  supposedly  wild  and  savage  horses  (po- 
tros).  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  horses  were  poor, 
spiritless  creatures,  that  could  be  made  to  buck  only 
by  the  riders  gashing  them  with  their  cruel  spurs  in  the 
tenderest  parts  of  their  bodies.  A  more  degrading  or 
beastly  exhibition  I  have  never  seen,  yet  it  amused  the 
Spanish-Argentine  audience  vastly.  No,  among  the 
gauchos  there  is  nothing  of  the  Arab's  traditional  at- 
tachment to  his  horse.  His  horse  is  to  him  a  brute 
that  has  cost  a  few  pesos  and  may  be  ridden  to  death 
with  no  great  loss.  Here,  however,  it  is  not  my  in- 
tention to  enlarge  on  this  subject,  which  I  am  reserv- 
ing for  more  specific  treatment  in  a  later  chapter,  and 
I  shall  merely  record  one  instance  of  gaucho  brutality, 
as  described  to  me  by  an  Argentine  lady. 

It  dates  back  some  eight  or  ten  years,  when,  together 
with  her  husband  and  a  party,  she  was  on  the  way  to 
a  very  remote  settlement  on  the  Andine  frontier,  where 
her  husband  had  taken  over  a  large  estancia.  The 
diligence  was  driven  by  a  team  of  six  or  eight  horses, 
and  while  going  along,  a  gaucho  who  accompanied  the 
driver  and  assisted  him  in  the  "  care  "  of  the  animals, 
managed,  by  his  skill  in  throwing  the  lasso,  to  capture 
a  wild  mare,  whom  they  surprised  in  the  solitude  of 
the  pampa.  More  as  an  exhibition  of  the  driver's 
power  to  control  the  animals  than  out  of  need,  this 
wild  thing  was  harnessed  up  with  the  others  and  at- 
tached immediately  to  the  coach.  It  very  soon  became 
unmanageable,  and  presently  in  its  struggles  fell  down, 
the  heavy  coach  rolling  over  it  and  breaking  its  hind 
legs.  Quick  as  a  flash,  the  gaucho  who  had  captured 


3i8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

it,  leapt  to  the  ground,  and  before  any  of  the  travel- 
lers realised  what  he  was  doing,  he  was  dangling  in 
front  of  them  the  mare's  tongue,  which  he  had  cut  out 
by  the  roots  with  his  long-bladed  knife,  the  animal 
being  still  alive !  The  husband  of  the  lady  who  related 
to  me  this  pleasant  little  episode  of  native  life,  imme- 
diately shot  the  animal  dead,  and  would  willingly  have 
done  the  same  to  the  man,  but  that  his  services  were 
essential  to  their  journey.  Mare's  tongue  is  consid- 
ered among  the  gauchos  a  great  delicacy,  and  they  are 
evidently  not  particular  about  waiting  for  the  mare  to 
be  done  with  it. 

I  have  no  wish  whatever  to  blacken  the  character 
of  the  gaucho,  nor  yet  have  I  come  to  praise  him,  for 
I  found  myself  but  little  in  touch  with  his  class,  and 
such  as  I  met  I  shall  hope  were  not  the  finest  speci- 
mens. Later,  however,  I  did  meet  an  old  German 
who  had  lived  among  them  for  some  thirty  years,  and 
still  had  his  home  in  a  lonely  corner  of  the  Andes. 
When  I  encountered  him  he  was  carrying  what  seemed 
an  unusually  large  revolver  of  an  antique  type,  and  I 
asked  him  if  he  could  count  up  how  many  people  he 
had  killed  with  it,  living  all  those  years  where  the  arm 
of  the  law  can  scarcely  reach  out.  u  Never  once  in 
my  life  have  I  had  to  use  it  against  a  human  being," 
was  his  surprising  reply,  and  with  that  must  disappear 
some  of  our  boys'  book  fictions  of  gaucho  ferocity. 

The  gaucho  is  to  South  America  what  the  cowboy 
is  to  the  North,  and  so  far  as  life  in  the  larger  towns 
is  concerned,  the  one  is  as  seldom  seen  as  the  other, 
where  streets  are  paved  and  electric  trams  are  run- 
ning. If  anything,  I  should  suspect  the  gaucho  of  en- 


THE  "CAMP"  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       319 

tertaining  a  greater  dislike  for  town  life  than  does  his 
counterpart  of  North  America.  He  is  essentially  a 
child  of  nature,  delighting  to  be  in  the  saddle,  roaming 
the  plains,  rounding  up  the  cattle,  living  to  the  full  his 
outdoor  life,  eating  enormous  quantities  of  beef  and 
mutton,  sipping  his  mate  and  strumming  his  guitar  at 
eventide  by  the  open  door  of  his  rudely  furnished 
rancho.  It  seems  to  me  that  his  opportunities  for 
scoundrelism  are  somewhat  limited  by  nature,  and  if 
there  is  no  denying  his  cruelty,  that  is  no  more  than 
acknowledging  his  origin.  He  seldom  owns  property 
of  much  importance,  and  there  are  not  many  families 
of  gaucho  origin  who  have  risen  to  wealth,  although 
one  full-blooded  member  of  the  race,  the  ever  noto- 
rious Rosas,  who  held  the  Argentine  in  an  iron  grip  as 
dictator  from  1833  to  1852,  has  left  his  mark  on  its 
history.  It  is  more  than  likely  that  he  is  fated  to  dis- 
appear in  the  onward  march  of  the  Republic.  No- 
where has  he  the  field  to  himself,  as  he  had  say  thirty 
years  ago,  for,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the  Ital- 
ian, the  Russian,  and  indeed  the  labourers  of  all  na- 
tions, have  spread  throughout  the  country  to  such  ex- 
tent that  there  is  probably  no  estancia  where  the 
newcomers  do  not  outnumber  the  gauchos.  Proud  of 
his  national  origin,  he  does  not  mix  readily  with  them, 
and  this  self-isolation  will  surely  have  but  one  result, 
although  the  time  may  still  be  distant  for  the  passing 
of  his  picturesque  figure  from  the  Argentine  scene. 

That  there  is  a  fascination  about  the  life  of  the 
Camp,  most  of  the  Britishers  who  engage  in  it  are 
ever  ready  to  bear  witness.  When  you  meet  a  fel- 
low-countryman who  is  sincerely  in  love  with  Argentine 


320  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

life,  he  is  almost  invariably  "  from  the  Camp."  But 
this  fascination  is  of  slow  growth,  and  such  occasional 
visits  as  the  town  dweller  is  able  to  pay  to  the  estancia 
of  a  friend  in  the  interior  go  a  very  little  way  to  cre- 
ate in  him  a  liking  for  the  life.  The  estancias  are 
very  much  alike  in  construction,  and  vary  only  accord- 
ing to  the  resources  of  the  owners.  They  are  usually 
plain  structures  of  wood  and  iron,  and  only  occasion- 
ally do  we  find  them  built  of  bricks.  Those  that  boast 
a  second  story  are  few,  though  where  the  owner  con- 
trols a  large  tract  of  territory  and  spends  much  of  his 
time  in  personal  supervision,  we  occasionally  find  a 
more  ambitious  effort  in  domestic  architecture.  There 
are  no  gentle  valleys  surrounded  by  low  hills,  or  shady 
woods,  where  attractive  sites  may  be  secured.  In  this 
treeless  land,  the  farmer  has  to  make  his  own  shade  by 
planting  trees  around  his  house,  and  usually  his  home 
is  set  within  a  quadrangle  of  eucalyptus  trees  or  Cal- 
ifornia poplars.  There  are  no  broad,  white,  firm 
highways  reaching  out  into  the  country,  along  which 
one  may  travel  in  comfort  to  distant  estancias  —  noth- 
ing but  mother  earth  everywhere,  and  such  rude  and 
primitive  tracks  as  the  European  mind  would  more 
readily  associate  with  neolithic  man  than  with  one  of 
the  richest  and  most  progressive  agricultural  countries 
of  the  modern  world.  The  European  traveller  who 
first  sets  eyes  on  a  camp  road  in  the  rainy  season  expe- 
riences a  shock  from  which  he  does  not  readily  recover. 
Let  me  try  to  picture,  not  a  mere  byway  to  an  es- 
tancia but  a  "  main  travelled  road "  in  the  Camp, 
such  as  I  have  seen  it  after  a  few  days  of  rain.  It 


THE  "CAMP"  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       321 

may  be  twice  as  wide  as  the  average  American  highway 
and  is  far  more  like  a  muddy  river-bed  than  a  way  for 
wheeled  traffic.  Here  and  there,  there  may  be  as  much 
as  thirty  or  forty  yards  in  which  the  proportion  of 
earth  to  water  is  greater,  though  it  will  be  cut  and 
scored  with  wheeled  tracks  a  foot  or  two  in  depth,  the 
whole  surface  having  the  consistency  of  a  mud  heap. 
Then  will  succeed  another  twenty  or  thirty  yards  of 
yellow  water,  deep  enough  to  drown  a  horse  did  it  fall 
down,  and  thus  league  upon  league,  alternating  be- 
tween patches  of  rutted  mud  and  rippling  pools,  the 
noble  highway  goes  on  its  undeviating  course  through 
the  Camp. 

Travel  along  one  of  these  roads  in  any  kind  of 
wheeled  vehicle  is  the  last  word  in  discomfort.  All 
the  buggies  used  for  passengers  stand  very  high  on  tall 
wheels,  so  that  the  axles  may  clear  the  inequalities  of 
the  mud,  and  the  wagons  for  conveying  grain  and 
goods  to  the  railway  stations  from  forty  to  one  hun- 
dred miles  away,  are  fitted  with  great  narrow  wheels, 
the  better  to  cut  through  the  doughy  compound.  The 
life  of  the  animals  employed  to  pull  these  vehicles  is 
one  long  agony  of  toil,  horses  having  to  make  their 
way  at  times  through  liquid  earth  half-way  up  their 
girths.  Teams  of  oxen  I  have  witnessed  so  buried  in 
the  "  road  "  that  only  a  small  part  of  their  backs  was 
visible  above  the  surface,  while  they  laboriously 
dragged  their  hoofs  with  a  sucking  noise  from  the 
thicker  compost  in  the  unseen  depths  where  they  found 
a  precarious  foothold.  The  reader  can  picture  to 
himself  the  delights  of  winter  travel  along  such  roads, 


322  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

and  further  he  may  imagine  how  nearly  these  highways 
approximate  to  the  conception  of  a  road  in  our  own 
land  when  they  suddenly  dry. 

Their  summer  condition  suggests  a  stream  of  lava 
that  has  cooled  down,  except  that  the  dust  lies  thick  on 
it  and  rises  in  blinding  clouds  at  every  puff  of  wind. 
Small  wonder,  then,  that  the  estanciero  who  can  afford 
to  live  in  town  during  the  winter  is  never  to  be  found 
at  his  estancia,  where,  in  truth,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
find  him  were  he  there,  as  most  of  these  country  houses 
during  the  winter  months  are  practically  isolated,  owing 
to  the  condition  of  the  roads,  and  an  aeroplane  sug- 
gests the  only  practical  means  of  reaching  them.  None 
the  less,  in  the  long  rainless  months  it  is  easy  enough, 
and  certainly  invigorating,  to  move  about  the  Camp  on 
horseback,  and  even  by  motor  car,  as  there  are  no  tire- 
some restrictions  about  keeping  to  the  road,  and  one 
may  ride  or  drive  at  will  over  long  tracts  of  flat  grassy 
land. 

The  smaller  towns  in  these  boundless  prairies  are 
all  sol-Such  alike,  owing to_  the  lack  ojfjiaii?idualitj[  in 
{^J^dsc^j^^tha^any  one  is  representative  of  the 
whole  country.  Most  of  them  are  on  the  railway  lines, 
for  the  railways  have  made  the  towns  spring  into  exist- 
ence, instead  of  the  railways  having  been  laid  to  serve 
the  needs  of  townships.  The  great  majority  of  them 
have  begun  with  nothing  more  than  a  railway  station 
and  an  almacen.  The  station  master  is  thus  a  person  of 
much  importance  throughout  the  Argentine,  the  link 
that  binds  the  estancias  within  his  district  —  and  his 
district  will  probably  stretch  a  matter  of  fifty  miles  or 
so  on  both  sides  of  the  railway  line  —  to  civilisation, 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       323 

as  represented  by  Buenos  Ayres  and  beyond.  He  re- 
ceives letters,  telegrams,  and  goods  for  them,  and  their 
gauchos  ride  in  to  the  station  so  many  times  a  week  to 
take  home  the  mail. 

According  as  the  settled  population  of  the  district 
offers  to  retail  tradesmen  opportunities  for  trafficking 
to  some  profit,  little  one-story  buildings  begin  to  spring 
"ujTnear  the  station,  until  in  a  year  or  two  some  dozens 
of  houses,  with  the  most  oddly  assorted  stores  occu- 
pying their  front  premises,  will  represent  the  thriving 
township,  whose  possibilities  are  limited  only  by  the 
imagination  of  the  vender  of  the  real  estate,  and  his 
powers  of  vision  would  put  some  of  our  most  imagina- 
tive novelists  to  shame.  There  will  be  a  few  rude 
cafes,  a  butcher's  shop,  which  opens  in  early  morning 
and  again  towards  evening,*  displaying  a  red  flag  to 
indicate  that  warm,  freshly  killed  meat  is  on  sale,  a 
baker's  that  hangs  out  a  white  flag  when  there's  a  sup- 
ply of  bread  for  sale,  a  "  general  dealer  "  or  two,  sell- 
ers of  "  store  clothes,"  and  such  craftsmen  as  joiners 
and  boot  repairers,  leather  workers  and  the  like  — 
"  the  rude  forefathers  of  the  village."  The  first 
almacenero  to  establish  himself  will  presently  be  ambi- 
tious of  marking  his  progress  by  converting  his  corru- 
gated iron  shanty  into  a  brick  building,  and  thus  the 
town  progresses  until  ten  or  fifteen  years  later  it  has 
its  municipal  authority  and  its  intendencia  and  begins 
to  think  of  lighting  its  still  unpaved  streets.  Wher- 
ever one  goes  throughout  the  Argentine,  there  are  these 
germs  of  possible  towns  to  be  seen,  all  without  the 
slightest  touch  of  beauty,  but  all  speaking  eloquently 
of  the  new  life  that  is  throbbing  in  the  veins  of  this 


324  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

vast  country,  to  what  great  issues  in  the  future  we  can 
but  guess. 

In  many  of  these  towns  where  the  population  runs 
into  a  few  thousands,  the  cinematograph  represents  the 
sole  centre  of  amusement,  and  it  may  be  taken  as  proof 
that  public  administration  in  the  larger  cities  makes 
for  cleanliness  of  life  when  I  mention  that  while  the 
moving  picture  exhibitions  so  numerous  in  all  the 
larger  towns  are  conducted  in  a  way  that  would  have 
the  warmest  approval  of  Mrs.  Grundy,  in  these  smaller 
country  places  it  is  the  custom  for  the  women  and  chil- 
dren to  leave  the  halls  after  the  ordinary  evening  ex- 
hibition, while  the  men  remain  to  witness  the  most  ob- 
scene films  that  can  be  secured  from  the  filth-mongers 
of  Paris  or  Berlin. 

There  is  probably  in  all  such_towns  aj  kast  one 
church,  but  the  influence  of  the  priest  in  the  Argentine 
Ts~sligl]^  "communi- 

ties^ exists  at  a  lo^ebb.  Still,  I  have  noted  many  evi- 
dences of  a  real  co-operative  spirit  in  the  erection  of 
churches,  the  men  lending  a  hand  with  their  labour  to 
rear  a  building  likely  to  serve  the  needs  of  the  town 
for  years  to  come,  and  often,  indeed,  anticipating  in 
its  size  and  ambitious  design  a  somewhat  distant  future. 
Many  churches  will  be  seen,  in  a  journey  through  the 
country,  only  half-built,  and  constructed  of  rude  clay 
bricks,  which  it  is  hoped  some  day  to  cover  over  with 
cement,  their  window  spaces  filled  with  sheets  of  tin, 
that  some  day  may  glow  with  coloured  glass.  In  fine, 
it  may  be  said  of  the  smaller  towns  of  the  Camp  that 
none  of  them  yet  exists,  but  all  are  in  the  making,  and 
in  judging  them  we  must  not  be  too  critical,  for  we  are 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       325 

looking  only  on  the  first  rough  sketches,  so  to  speak, 
and  know  not  what  they  may  become. 

When  we  come  to  the  large  provincial  centres,  such 
as  Rosario,  La  Plata,  Mendoza,  Cordoba,  Tucuman, 
Santa  Fe,  and  others  of  growing  importance,  we  find 
ourselves  contemplating  something  that  is  not  merely 
in  the  initial  stages  of  its  existence,  but  has  "  arrived." 
Between  the  forlorn  little  pueblecito,  or  even  towns  of 
some  note,  such  as  Dolores  in  the  province  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  or  Mercedes  in  that  of  San  Luis,  and  the  im- 
portant cities  I  have  just  named,  there  is  even  a  greater 
difference  than  between  the  familiar  commercial  centres 
of  the  Northern  continent  and  these  emporia  of  the 
South.  Difficult  though  it  is  to  be  perfectly  just  in  com- 
paring towns  where  one  has  been  no  more  than  a  fleeting 
visitor,  with  others  in  which,  voluntarily  or  involunta- 
rily, one  may  have  had  to  live  for  some  time,  I  do  ven- 
tuse  to  say  that  from  what  I  saw  of  the  provincial  cities, 
I  can  conceive  myself  at  least  as  happy  (if  not  more  so) 
settled  in  such  a  town  as  Rosario  or  La  Plata,  as  in 
Buenos  Ayres  itself. 

Although  noted  for  their  travelling  propensities, 
which  take  so  many  Argentines  to  Europe  every  year, 
the  visitor  will  be  surprised  to  find  how  seldom  he^will 
meet  a  native  who  knows  his  own  country  at  first  hand. 
It  may  be  safely  salcT  that  in  "Buenos  Ayres  one  will 
meet  as  many  people  of  native  birth  who  have  visited 
Europe  as  have  been  to  Rosario,  and  most  certainly 
far  more  who  have  made  the  overseas  trip  than  have 
faced  the  thousand  miles  railway  journey  to  Tucuman. 
The  Argentine  does  not  know  his  own  country,  and  he 
is  scarcely  to  be  blamed.  A  certain  widely  travelled 


326  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

native  used  to  entertain  me  with  descriptions  of  his 
adventures  in  London  and  on  the  Continent,  and  would 
grow  dithyrambic  in  his  praise  of  old  England's  cap- 
ital, where,  in  his  opinion,  the  whole  municipal  energy 
and  the  efforts  of  the  electric  railways,  tramways,  om- 
nibuses, and  all  branches  of  public  catering,  were  de- 
voted to  making  the  lot  of  the  foreign  visitor  as  easy 
and  comfortable  as  possible.  Beyond  being  able  to 
read  our  language  in  an  elementary  way,  he  had  no 
command  of  it,  but,  armed  with  one  of  the  multitudi- 
nous maps  of  the  "  Underground,"  and  following  the 
arrows  which  so  lavishly  decorate  the  station  walls  and 
the  insides  of  the  trains  that  burrow  by  devious  paths 
through  London's  mighty  molehill,  he  felt  perfectly 
happy  and  never  at  a  loss  how  to  make  his  way  about. 
Patriot  though  he  was,  London  and  Paris  and  the  great 
cities  of  Europe  had  more  to  teach  him  than  any  of  his 
own,  and  knowing,  as  he  did,  each  Argentine  city  is 
more  or  less  a  replica  of  another,  while  the  country- 
possesses  no  scenes  of  natural  beauty  within  easy  reach 
of  the  capital,  he  was  content  to  take  his  educational 
trips  abroad  and  leave  the  seeing  of  his  native  land, 
if  ever,  to  a  later  time,  when  there  might  be  better  re- 
ward for  the  pains. 

This  is  the  attitude  of  the  average  Argentine,  so 
that  the  Italian  labourer  who  has  had  to  move  about 
the  country  in  quest  of  employment  comes  to  know 
the  Republic  better  than  its  natural  citizens,  while  the 
European  engineers,  commercial  travellers,  and  busi- 
ness men  in  general,  can  tell  the  Argentine  native  a 
great  deal  more  about  his  country  from  personal  ob- 
servation than  he  himself  is  ever  like  to  know.  He 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       327 

has  heard  so  much  about  it,  too,  from  foreign  writers, 
and  he  is  so  frequently  treated  to  the  dazzling  products 
of  the  National  Department  of  Statistics,  that  he  is 
given  to  take  its  wonders  for  granted  and  leave  it  to 
others  to  perform  the  task  of  personal  inspection.  My- 
self, I  had  planned  to  go  as  far  afield  as  Tucuman, 
merely  to  have  a  glimpse  of  the  sugar  cane  and  orange- 
growing  district,  so  different  in  character  and  climate 
from  the  agricultural  regions  of  the  Centre  and  the 
South,  but  being  assured  by  three  different  gentlemen 
who  had  their  business  headquarters  in  that  thriving 
city  of  the  North  that  half  a  day  would  be  ample  in 
which  to  exhaust  its  interests,  while  the  journey  thither 
and  back  again  would  consume  some  four  or  five  days, 
I  decided  to  range  myself  with  the  native,  and  take 
Tucuman  for  granted.  But  opportunity  serving,  dur- 
ing my  stay,  to  visit  a  number  of  provincial  centres  be- 
tween the  River  Plate  and  the  Andes,  I  shall  now  set 
down  a  few  recollections  of  some  of  these  visits. 

A  very  acute  American  gentleman  of  my  acquaint- 
ance, carrying  on  an  important  export  business  with 
South  America,  disputed  an  assertion  of  mine,  based 
entirely  on  something  that  I  had  read  years  before, 
that  the  city  of  La  Plata  in  the  province  of  Buenos 
Ayres  was  a  more  important  centre  of  population  than 
Bahia  Blanca,  the  rising  southern  port  of  the  province. 
He  was  perfectly  satisfied  that  I  was  in  error,  and  even 
went  so  far  as  to  doubt  the  very  existence  of  such  a 
city,  suggesting  that  I  was  confusing  it  with  the  fash- 
ionable holiday  resort  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  Mar 
del  Plata.  That  a  town  of  fully  100,000  inhabitants 
could  exist  anywhere  near  Buenos  Ayres  and  on  the 


328  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

very  banks  of  the  River  Plate  seemed  to  him  impossi- 
ble, especially  as  he  had  just  returned  from  a  business 
visit  to  the  country.  This  I  mention  merely  as  a  pass- 
ing illustration  of  the  lack  of  knowledge  among  even 
the  most  intelligent  people  as  to  the  topography  of  the 
Argentine. 

Not  only  was  I  confident  of  the  existence  of  La 
Plata,  concerning  whose  famous  museum  I  had  fre- 
quently read,  but  it  was  one  of  the  cities  I  intended  to 
give  myself  the  pleasure  of  visiting.  So,  one  fine  day 
I  hied  me  hither,  forty  minutes  from  Plaza  Constitu- 
cion.  This  is  one  of  the  pleasantest  little  train  jour- 
neys in  the  province,  passing  through  some  of  the  old- 
est settled  country,  where  woods  and  water  combine 
to  form  many  a  little  landscape  like  the  reproduction 
of  some  old-world  scene. 

La  Plata  is  essentially  a  thing  of  the  New  World. 
It  is  "hot"  a  town  that  Has  grown.  It" has  been  made, 
or,  more  correctly,  it  has  been  nearly  made,  and 
stopped  short  temporarily  for  lack  of  funds.  It  is  the 
capital  city  of  the  Province  of  Buenos  Ayres,  which  in 
1 88 1,  under  the  policy  of  President  Roca,  became  a 
distinct  entity  from  the  newly  created  federal  district 
of  Buenos  Ayres.  The  explanation  of  this  in  due  de- 
tail is  matter  for  the  historian,  and  involves  the  tracing 
of  the  growth  of  the  Republic,  its  evolution  from  the 
Confederation  of  the  River  Plate,  and  the  ultimate 
settling  of  political  rivalry  by  the  creation  of  Buenos 
Ayres  as  the  federal  capital,  in  which  struggle  Cordoba 
had  fought  a  fierce  fight  against  heavy  geographical 
odds  and  against  "  the  Fox  "  of  modern  Argentine  pol- 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       329 

itics,  General  Roca.  Cordoba  still  looks  with  jealous 
eye  on  Buenos  Ayres  as  a  usurper  city. 

Before  the  iQth  of  November,  1882,  the  site  of  La 
Plata,  twenty-four  miles  south-east  of  Buenos  Ayres, 
and  inland  some  five  miles  from  the  south  shore  of  the 
River  Plate,  was  a  barren  waste,  but  on  that  day  the 
corner  stone  of  the  new  capital  of  the  province  was 
laid.  The  plan  adopted  for  the  making  of  the  city 
was  sufficiently  ambitious,  following  that  of  Washing- 
ton, with  great  diagonal  avenues  ninety-seven  and  a 
half  feet  wide,  streets  of  fifty-eight  and  a  half  feet  in 
width,  and  many  spacious  public  squares.  Ten  mil- 
lion pounds  went  to  the  laying  out  of  this  model  pro- 
vincial capital  and  the  erection  of  its  public  buildings. 
Its  importance  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  the 
provincial  legislature  having  its  seat  here  controls  ter- 
ritory as  large  as  the  British  Isles,  and  a  population 
to-day  numbering  upwards  of  two  millions. 

So  quickly  was  the  work  of  construction  pushed  for- 
ward, that  in  less  than  three  years  from  the  date  of  its 
foundation,  La  Plata  had  already  a  population  of 
thirty  thousand,  and  in  addition  to  the  splendid  public 
buildings  which  had  sprung  up  on  what  so  lately  was 
a  barren  waste,  there  were  nearly  4,000  houses  erected 
or  in  course  of  construction.  For  a  time  the  building 
went  on  merrily,  and  then  the  funds  began  to  give  out, 
so  that  to-day  we  find  the  city  at  once  an  evidence  of  a 
great  outburst  of  energy  and  an  earnest  of  what  it  may 
become  when  the  provincial  treasury  is  again  sufficiently 
well  filled  to  permit  of  finishing  much  that  has  lain  for 
years  incomplete. 


330  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

The  province  having  lost  control  of  the  port  of 
Buenos  Ayres  by  the  Federal  Act,  set  about  another 
great  undertaking  in  which  four  million  pounds  more 
were  spent.  This  was  the  building  of  a  port  at  En- 
senada,  about  five  miles  away  on  the  River  Plate,  con- 
necting that  by  means  of  a  canal  and  railroad  with  La 
Plata.  Ensenada  is  now  the  port  for  several  lines  of 
steamships  engaged  in  the  frozen  meat  traffic,  and  car- 
rying many  thousands  of  passengers  annually  to  and 
from  the  River  Plate. 

The  railway  station  of  La  Plata  is  a  very  tasteful 
and  commodious  building,  which  gives  the  visitor  an 
agreeable  first  impression  on  arrival,  while  the  spacious 
streets,  villainously  paved  though  many  of  them  re- 
main, offer  a  welcome  sense  of  freedom  and  airiness  to 
one  who  has  been  cooped  up  for  any  length  of  time  in 
the  choking  byways  of  Buenos  Ayres.  There  is  none 
of  that  eddying  and  surging  traffic  of  the  metropolis. 
The  current  of  life  flows  with  an  old-world  leisure; 
everywhere  there  is  a  sense  of  "  ampler  air."  The 
public  buildings  are  numerous  andjmposing,  the  G ov- 
er miieliFTToTnjeTTr^  TTeasury,  the  Law 
Courts,  and  all  the  other  departments  of  the  provincial 
legislature  being  housed  in  handsome  quarters,  though 
naturally  much  that  looks  as  if  it  had  been  built  for- 
ever is  really  found  on  inspection  to  be  in  keeping  with 
the  universal  "  sham "  of  Argentine  architecture. 
French  influence  predominates,  and  while  there  is  much 
in  the  city  that  recalls  a  "French  provincial  capital,  there 
is  nothing  beyond  its  ground  plan  and  the  width  of  its 
streets  to  liken  it  to  the  splendid  capital  of  the  United 
States. 


THE  "CAMP"  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       331 

The  houses  in  the  residential  part  are  chiefly  of  the 
familiar  one-story  variety,  with  here  and  there  a  mod- 
ification of  a  French  Renaissance  building,  austere, 
withdrawn,  and  always  somewhat  dusty.  Grass 
sprouts  luxuriously  between  the  cobbles  in  all  the 
streets  a  little  way  from  the  centre,  and  the  great  av- 
enues that  cut  athwart  the  town  in  all  directions  still 
lack  many  finishing  touches  in  the  way  of  pavement, 
while  most  of  the  public  squares  speak  of  plans  stopped 
short  of  completion.  The  great  public  park,  amply 
shaded  with  lofty  eucalyptus  trees"  and  no  lack  of 
shrubbery,  though  a  worthy  monument  and  an  adorn- 
ment to  any  town,  has  still  that  unkempt  appearance 
of  a  partly  finished  exhibition~ground.  Some  day,  I 
3(7  not  doubt,  it  will  receive  its  finishing  touches,  and 
will  probably  be  a  nearer  approach,  as  indeed  it  is  at 
present,  to  our  notions  of  a  public  park  than  anything 
to  be  seen  elsewhere  in  the  South  American  continent. 
The  museum  in  the  park  presents  a  rather  scabby  face 
of  flaking  cement,  which  goes  ill  with  its  severe  Greek 
modelling.  Interiorly,  it  is  admirably  arranged,  and 
noteworthy  chiefly  for  its  wonderful  collection  of 
glyptodons,  those  giant  armadillos  of  the  country's 
prehistoric  past.  In  no  museum  have  I  seen  such 
splendid  specimens  anTso~many^have  Tiere  found  house 
-roenvthat  later  :on,  whett  the  other -provinces  come  to 
organise  their  local  museums,  it  should  be  possible  to 
supply  them  all  with  specimens  and  still  leave  sufficient 
to  make  a  brave  show  at  La  Plata.  Noteworthy  also  is 
thlfTamous  stucco  cast  of  the  monstrous  brontosaurus, 
taken  from  the  original  in  New  York  Museum  of  Natu- 
ral History  and  presented  by  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie. 


332  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

La  Plata  is  not  ill  supplied  with  hotels  and  restau- 
rants, and  contains  a  number  of  well-designed  churches, 
as~well  as"  "two  or  three  handsome  theatres,  while 
its  race-course  is  second  in  the  Argentine  only  to 
that  of  Buenos  Ayres.  Withal,  a  beautiful,  and  in 
many  ways  an  attractive  city,  where  it  would  be  no  ill 
lot  to  pass  one's  life,  though  I  am  prepared  to  be  told 
it  is  a  hotbed  of  political  bickerings ;  inevitable  that,  in 
any  centre  of  South  American  government.  One 
drawback  it  has,  which  would  plague  me  sorely,  I  must 
confess.  On  the  occasion  of  my  first  visit,  a  beautiful 
calm  day  of  winter  sunshine  changed  in  an  instant,  on 
the  rising  of  a  sharp  wind,  to  the  greyness  of  a  Lon- 
don fog,  but  ten  thousand  times  more  abominable  in 
character  than  any  fog  could  ever  be,  for  the  greyness 
came  from  dense  clouds  of  finest  dust,  raised  in  such 
abundance  from  the  sand-laden  streets  that  even  the 
great  public  buildings,  one  of  which  I  was  in  the  act 
of  photographing,  were  suddenly  blotted  from  sight, 
and  everybody  out  of  doors  was  making  a  desperate 
dash  for  shelter.  I  saw  it  again  in  rain,  and  once  more 
in  sunshine,  and  I  shall  prefer  to  think  of  it  in  the  last 
condition,  and  always  to  defend  it  from  those  who  will 
tell  me  it  is  not  worth  the  forty  minutes'  journey  from 
the  capital. 

Entirely  different  in  character  from  La  Plata  is  the 
busy,  go-ahead,  sdf-^eli^^^commercial  town  o£-Ro- 
'sariQ, ImlSej-ight  bank  of  the  Parana  River,  some  160 
miles  northwest  of  Buenos  Ayres.  This  splendid  city 
is  no  costly  product  of  political  ambitions,  but  the 
quick  flowering  of  a  great  trade  centre,  Rosario  being 
the  market-place  of  tne  vast  and  bountiful  provinces 


MONTEVIDEO  FROM  THE  SOUTH,  SHOWING  THE  CERRO  WITH 
ITS  FORT. 


SHIPPING  IN  THE  ROADSTEAD  AT  MONTEVIDEO  AND  T 
MACIEL  QUAY. 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       333 

that  lie  between  the  Parana  and  the  Andes,  and  a  river 
port  of  great  and  growing  activity.  The  province  in 
which  it  is  situated,  that  of  Santa  Fe,  still  contains  con- 
siderable less  than  a  million  inhabitants,  and  of  these 
about  150,000  live  and  work  in  Rosario,  yet  this  great 
town,  the  second  in  commercial  importance  in  the  en- 
tire Republic,  is  under  the  political  control  of  the  city 
of  Santa  Fe,  the  capital  of  the  province,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  less  than  40,000.  These  two  cities,  by  the 
way,  have  equal  appropriations  for  public  education! 
In  a  country  where  population  and  commerce  are  the 
determining  factors  of  importance,  it  can  easily  be  im- 
agined how  Rosarians  chafe  under  the  domination  of 
the  political  groups  in  sleepy  Santa  Fe.  That  is  a  state 
of  things  that  cannot  endure,  and  some  day  the  agita- 
tion, periodically  renewed,  for  the  shifting  of  the  seat 
of  provincial  government,  will  surely  succeed,  and  give 
to  Rosario  the  political  importance  which  the  enter- 
prise of  its  citizens  and  its  commercial  prosperity  de- 
mand. 

It  is  one  of  the  Argentine  towns  from  which  I  have 
carried  away  the  pleasantest  memories.  I  am  not  at 
all  certain  that  its  superior  hotel  accommodation  does 
not  to  some  extent  colour  my  recollections.  Nor  is 
that  a  small  matter,  for  had  it  been  possible  to  secure 
in  the  capital  city  so  near  an  approach  to  European 
comfort  as  may  be  obtained  in  at  least  two  of  the  ex- 
cellent and  ably  conducted  hotels  of  Rosario,  I  fancy 
I  should  have  passed  my  long  months  in  Buenos  Ayres 
more  agreeably.  As  a  provincial  city,  Rosario  un- 
doubtedly approximates  more  nearly  to  our  ideals  than 
es-as  a~capitat.  It  "is"  "Hardly  less  cos- 


334  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

mopolitan  in  character,  and  there  is  a  large  and  agree- 
able sense  of  commercial  movement  everywhere  in  its 
bright  and  ample  thoroughfares.  Lacking  in  public 
buildings,  for  the  reason  stated,  the  city  contains  many 
fine  commercial  edifices,  while  its  shopping  centres  are 
wonderfully  well-furnished  with  world-wide  products, 
one  large  establishment,  devoted  to  sanitary  appliances, 
excelling  anything  I  have  ever  seen  in  the  quantity  and 
variety  of  its  wares,  having  a  huge  showroom  devoted 
entirely  to  all  sorts  of  porcelain  and  enamel  baths. 

All  the  principal  banks  have  substantial-looking 
buildings,  and  the  residences  of  the  merchants  of  the 
town  are  no  unworthy  competitors  with  those  of 
Buenos  Ayres  itself.  There  are  several  good  theatres, 
where  the  best  foreign  companies  that  come  to  Buenos 
Ayres  invariably  make  an  appearance.  The  principal 
park,  a  favourite  centre  of  social  life,  is  admirably  laid 
out,  and  has  its  inevitable  statue  of  Garibaldi,  for  the 
Italians  are  here  as  plentiful  as  elsewhere,  and  wher- 
ever a  colony  of  Italians  can  get  together  sufficient 
money  for  a  statue  of  their  national  hero,  there  will 
he  be  seen  in  some  heroic  pose.  M.  Huret  was  re- 
minded of  Bluebeard,  in  looking  upon  the  Garibaldi 
of  Rosario,  and  I  confess  the  somewhat  ferocious  as- 
pect of  the  hero  of  Italian  Independence  as  portrayed 
in  this  particular  statue,  would  fit  not  ill  that  ogre  of 
our  childhood. 

But  what  interested  me  most  in  my  peregrinations 
around  the  city  was  the  wonderful  dock  accommoda- 
tion. The  building  of  its  splendid  port  began  in  1902, 
and  I  should  judge  that  it  is  now  complete,  or  as  near 
completion  as  will  be  necessary  for  some  years  to 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       335 

come,  for  the  Rosarians,  with  a  fine  sense  of  future 
development,  determined,  in  providing  a  port  for  the 
ever-growing  traffic  of  the  town,  to  base  its  accommo- 
dation upon  the  estimated  needs  of  the  year  1932! 
By  reason  of  this  generous  anticipation  of  the  future, 
the  port,  where  at  present  a  traffic  valued  at  nearly 
$120,000,000  per  annum  is  handled,  looks  almost  idle. 
The  quays  stretch  along  the  river  front  for  some  miles, 
dotted  here  and  there  with  big  grain  elevators,  and 
railway  trucks  unloading  their  freight  for  shipment 
into  the  steamers,  which,  though  mustering  a  consider- 
able fleet,  seem  "  few  and  far  between,"  the  accommo- 
dation for  them  being  so  enormous.  The  River  Pa- 
rana is  wide  and  easily  navigable  for  sea-going  vessels 
of  considerable  tonnage  at  Rosario,  and  this,  combined 
with  the  privileged  situation  of  the  town  in  the  centre 
of  one  of  the  richest  agricultural  regions  of  the  Re- 
public, marks  Rosario  out  for  a  future  of  the  greatest 
prosperity.  Its  history  already  is  second  to  none  as  a 
modern  romance  of  commercial  expansion,  and  the 
brisk  business  air  that  pervades  the  community,  ex- 
haled by  all  its  citizens,  legitimately  proud  of  its  rapid 
progress,  render  it  a  most  attractive  centre  for  the 
commercial  man. 

Here  we  find  a  considerable  British  Colony,  for 
which  in  1912  a  locJTEnglish  newspaper  was  started, 
and  the  town  is  also  a  favourite  shipping  centre  with 
the  English  estancieros  of  the  closely  settled  agricul- 
tural region  to  the  north  and  west,  to  which  five  or  six 
railway  lines  branch  out  from  the  city. 

The  railway  run  between  Rosario  and  Buenos  Ayres 
is  perhaps  the  most  comfortable  of  any  in  the  Republic, 


336  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

and  the  Pullman  service  is  excellently  maintained,  the 
journey  occupying  from  about  eight  or  nine  o'clock  in 
the  morning  until  about  half-past  six  in  the  evening. 
The  departure  of  the  Rosario  express  from  Retiro 
every  day  is  usually  a  scene  of  much  male  embracing 
and  female  kissing.  Like  most  train  journeys  in 
the  Argentine,  there  is  never  a  tunnel,  scarcely  a  per- 
ceptible change  in  the  gradient,  and  only  an  occasional 
low  bridge  over  some  small  stream  to  be  crossed. 
You  skim  along  through  endless  fields  of  alfalfa,  of 
maize,  of  linseed,  or  through  vast  pasture  lands  dotted 
with  innumerable  herds  of  cattle,  which  always  re- 
minded me  of  Meredith's  sonnet  where  he  says  that 
Shakespeare's  laugh  is 

Broad  as  ten  thousand  beeves  at  pasture! 

A  trip  to  Cordoba,  involving  another  day's  journey 
north  and  west  from  Rosario,  offers  a  more  appreci- 
able change  of  scene.  Here  we  find  ourselves  in,.a  city 
that  has  caught  but  little  of  the  new  spirit  of  the  Ar- 
gentine and  ral;Tiei^rides~ifseirpn.,£eing  the,.jshrine  of 
fhirarrcienr spirit.  For  the  first  time,  too,  we  can  wit- 
ness~~sc)fflething  resembling  scenery,  as  the  country  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Cordoba,  tired  of  being  flat  and 
uninteresting  for  so  many  hundred  miles,  begins  to  take 
on  some  picturesque  inequalities,  and  at  no  great  dis- 
tance beyond  the  antique  city,  the  Hills  of  Cordoba, 
wooded  and  picturesque,  come  gratefully  to  the  eye. 
The  city  itself  is  essentially  Spanish,  with  its  narrow 
streets  and  old  colonial  houses,  its  numerous  churches 
and  black-gowned  priests.  Less  than  any  of  the  Ar- 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       337 

gentine  towns  do  we  find  here  that  cosmopolitan 
mixture  of  humanity;  here  the  old  customs  have  fought 
a  longer  fight  against  modern  innovations.  M.  Huret 
mentions  an  amusing  example  of  this.  He  says : 
"  No  more  than  twelve  years  ago,  it  would  not  have 
been  decent  for  any  Cordoba  woman  walking  through 
the  public  streets  to  have  raised  her  skirt  slightly;  it 
was  allowed  to  sweep  the  pavement  with  its  tail.  Two 
fashionable  young  ladies  who  had  returned  from  Paris 
were  the  occasion  of  a  scandal,  by  having  ventured  to 
show  their  ankles.  But  they  continued  doing  so,  and 
ended  by  conquering  public  opinion,  so  that  to-day  the 
ladies  of  the  town  are  no  longer  afraid  to  raise  their 
skirts  in  the  street,  but  even  have  come  to  the  point  of 
wearing  short  dresses!"  This  is  very  characteristic 
of  Cordoba,  whose  university  (founded  in  1605  by 
the  Bishop  of  Tucuman,  and  sharing  with  that  of 
Lima  the  distinction  of  being  the  oldest  in  South  Amer- 
ica) has  done  so  much  to  maintain  the  spirit  of  times 
past,  at  the  very  threshold  of  the  most  insistent  mod- 
ernity. Little  though  I  admire  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  as  I  find  it  in  South  America,  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  Argentine  is  the  better  for  its  Cordoba.  It  is 
good  that  in  a  young  republic,  where  commerce  and  the 
making  of  money  have  suddenly  and  inevitably  become 
the  great  ambitions  of  the  populace,  the  spirit  of  ven- 
eration for  the  past,  even  to  the  point  of  narrow- 
mindedness  in  social  relationships,  should  somewhere 
survive  as  a  leaven  to  the  lump.  Intensely  provincial, 
parochial  indeed,  the  life  of  Cordoba  has  still  about  it 
something  of  the  aroma  of  a  grey,  old,  historic  place, 


338  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

and  may  not  that  be  as  fine  a  possession  as  great  docks 
and  grain  elevators,  and  new-made  banks  stuffed  with 
money? 

Of  Mendoza  I  shall  have  something  to  say  in  a 
later  chapter,  and  of  Bahia  Blanca  I  need  only  state 
that  it  is  no  more  than  a  town  in  the  making  —  the 
raw  materials  of  a  great  possibility,  which  in  another 
decade  may  have  grown  into  something  not  unlike 
Rosario  to-day.  Its  life  is  naturally  lacking  in  that 
rhythm  I  find  in  the  great  established  emporium  of  the 
Parana,  but  on  every  hand  the  evidences  of  activity  are 
so  patent  that  it  requires  no  remarkable  vision  to  see 
Bahia  Blanca  some  day  with  a  population  running  into 
six  figures,  with  finished  streets  and  settled  conditions, 
where  so  much  at  present  is  in  the  travail  of  birth. 

To  sum  up,  the  provincial  life  of  the  Republic  re- 
flects in  high  degree  tj^con^itioHs^of  the  capital  from 

~  commercial    centres  _  uke_  thek__cug. 

IsFtrTe"  great  exemplar,  and  it  is  only  to 


be  expected  that  the  newer  towns  springing  into  great- 
ness should  aim  at  reproducing  in  themselves  what 
they  admire  in  the  capital,  avoiding  always  the  crea- 
tion of  such  unduly  narrow  thoroughfares  as  Buenos 
Ayres  has  inherited  from  the  old  colonial  city.  In  the 
smaller  towns,  life  is  attended  with  many  hardships 
and  calls  for  stern  self-denial,  for  plain  living,  if  not 
for  high  thinking,  and  the  impression  of  their  inhabi- 
tants which  survives  in  my  memories  of  those  I  visited 
is  that  of  their  sullen  determination  to  become  rich,  at 
no  matter  what  inconvenience  for  the  present.  So, 
everywhere  one  finds  the  people  looking  to  the  future 
rather  than  endeavouring  to  "  live  along  the  way." 


THE  "  CAMP  "  AND  PROVINCIAL  TOWNS       339 

For  hundreds  of  thousands,  the  Future  may  have  a  full 
hand.  For  hundreds  of  thousands  more,  perhaps,  it 
is  well  the  Future  is  veiled,  that  they  may  at  least  toil 
on  in  hope. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE    SPIRIT   OF   THE    COUNTRY 

THERE  is  a  sense  in  which  the  spirit  of  a  country  must 
show  itself  in  any  honest  description  of  its  life  and 
character.  The  preceding  chapters  of  this  book  have 
dealt  with  so  many  and  varied  aspects  of  Argentine 
life  that  the  reader  should  have  been  able  to  take  in 
from  these  something  at  least  of  the  spirit  of  the  coun- 
try: perhaps  as  much  as  can  be  made  manifest  in  any 
specialised  treatment  of  the  subject.  Yet  I  feel  the 
attempt  should  be  made  to  disengage  from  the  tangle 
of  ideas  and  impressions  created  in  the  mind  by  close 
observation  of  the  ways  of  a  people  some  orderly  esti- 
mate of  its  "  spirit." 

I  remember  very  well  on  our  taking  the  river 
steamer  from  Montevideo  for  the  night  journey  to 
Buenos  Ayres,  after  transshipping  from  the  ocean 
liner,  that  an  Anglo-South-American,  who  had  been 
a  fellow  voyager,  said  it  would  be  amusing  to  watch 
the  demeanour  of  the  Argentines  on  board,  as  we 
should  be  able  to  distinguish  them  from  the  general 
mass  by  their  swaggering  walk,  their  bumptious  man- 
ners, and  sartorial  affectations.  And  that  evening, 
while  the  passengers  were  thronging  aboard,  it  did 
seem  as  though  he  spoke  truth,  so  many  answered  to 
his  description;  evidently  all  of  them  Argentines  re- 
turning to  Buenos  Ayres  at  the  close  of  the  Mon- 
tevidean  season. 

340 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  COUNTRY  341 

These  fellows  strutted  about  the  saloon  and  paraded 
the  deck  of  the  steamer  with  a  splendid  air  of  pro- 
prietorship, while  the  grossly  offensive  manner  of  the 
stewards,  who  treated  the  passengers  with  a  lofty 
contempt,  and  a  calm  indifference  to  their  wants,  gave 
one  an  extremely  bad  first  impression  of  Argentine 
manners.  Nevertheless  this  was  no  true  sample. 
The  traveller  who  allows  such  evidences  as  these  to 
prejudice  him  against  a  whole  people  is  hardly  a  trained 
observer.  If  a  foreigner  were  to  judge  the  British 
people  by  many  of  the  specimens  I  have  myself  en- 
countered abroad,  he  would  draw  an  extremely  un- 
flattering picture  of  them  as  a  nation.  Swagger  there  is 
and  to  spare,  among  the  Argentines,  and  boastfulness 
of  their  national  progress  is  only  to  be  expected  in  a 
young  people  whose  international  experience  is  still  far 
from  complete,  but  that  these  are  essentials  of  the 
Argentine  spirit,  I  would  have  no  one  believe. 

Truer  would  it  be  to  say  that  the  spirit  of  the  Ar- 
gentine—  that  intangible  something  which  permeates 
a  whole  people  and  marks  them  off  from  others  — 
can  best  be  discovered  in  walking  about  the  streets, 
mingling  with  the  throng,  listening  to  the  casual  re- 
marks of  passers-by.  You  will  notice,  not  once  or 
twice,  but  scores  of  times  in  any  day  —  that  is,  if  you 
notice  anything  —  the  curious  habit  of  men  in  con- 
versation rubbing  together  the  forefinger  and  thumb 
of  the  right  hand.  This  is  expressive  of  money.  One 
of  the  curiosities  of  the  Spanish  language  is  the  extraor- 
dinary amount  of  gesture  which  usually  goes  with  it; 
people  commonly,  when  referring  to  themselves,  tap 
the  breast  to  emphasise  the  personal  pronoun;  when 


342  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

speaking  of  having  seen  something,  they  will  point  to 
the  eyes,  or  to  the  mouth,  if  they  wish  to  convey  some 
notion  either  of  speech  or  silence.  In  the  same  way, 
the  Argentine  seldom  mentions  plata  (money)  without 
this  rubbing  of  the  forefinger  and  thumb,  suggestive 
remotely,!  suppose,  of  the  counting  out  of  coins.  He 
who  christened  the  Rio  de  la  Plata  made  a  happier  hit 
than  he  could  have  suspected,  for  plata  lies  close  to  the 
heart  of  every  citizen  of  Buenos  Ayres,  and  you  have 
never  to  listen  many  minutes  to  a  casual  conversation 
in  the  street  without  hearing  mention  of  it.  "  He  has 
given  so  many  pesos  per  yard  for  the  land."  "  Fancy 
selling  it  for  a  thousand  pesos  and  having  bought  it 
only  eighteen  months  ago  at  three  hundred  and  fifty !  " 
"  He  has  lots  of  money  —  tiene  mucha  plata."  "  He  is 
asking  too  much  money."  "  I  have  offered  so  many 
pesos."  These,  and  such  phrases,  one  overhears  at 
every  turn,  and  might  well  suppose  that  the  spirit  of 
the  country  was  exclusively  associated  with  the  get- 
ting of  money. 

Still  would  that  be  a  wrong  conclusion,  just  as  I  be- 
lieve it  would  be  unfair  to  the  country  as  a  whole  to 
judge  of  it  by  the  sham  and  shoddy  of  Buenos  Ayres 
and  its  great  cities,  or  by  the  primitive  and  low  social 
conditions  of  the  smaller  towns.  We  must  look  else- 
where for  that  "  spirit "  of  which  we  are  in  search. 
The  Jockey  Club  will  not  help  us.  No,  it  will  tend 
rather  to  confirm  the  impression  of  the  peacocketing 
passengers  on  board  the  river  steamer.  Congreso  it- 
self will  help  but  little.  There  we  shall  find  the 
"  grafter,"  the  place  seeker,  the  dishonest  politician, 
just  as  eminently  successful  as  in  the  United  States,  and 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  COUNTRY  343 

who  would  allow  that  the  real  spirit  of  the  United 
States  disengaged  itself  in  Congress  or  from  the  politi- 
cal groups  at  Washington  ? 

Again,  a  friend  of  mine,  having  important  business 
with  the  municipality  of  a  provincial  town,  had  to  call 
upon  the  intendente  with  reference  to  the  signing  of 
certain  documents,  which  formality  was  only  possible 
after  the  mayor's  secretary  had  pocketed  several  hun- 
dred pounds  of  backsheesh,  and  the  mayor  himself  had 
named  his  price  for  his  signature.  The  intendente's 
daughter,  a  young  woman  of  seventeen  years  of  age, 
singularly  handsome,  happened  to  be  in  the  room  at 
the  beginning  of  the  interview,  and  my  friend  may  have 
looked  upon  her  with  some  evidence  of  admiration,  for 
when  she  left  her  fattier  remarked  to  him: 

"  Fine  little  girl,  my  Manuelita,  eh?  She'll  make 
good  meat  for  the  beasts !  " 

On  a  later  visit  in  connection  with  the  same  under- 
taking, the  daughter  was  not  present,  but  the  accom- 
modating mayor  blandly  asked  my  friend  if  he  would 
care  to  see  his  little  daughter,  as  he  rather  thought  he 
admired  her, —  a  fatherly  suggestion  which  was  re- 
spectfully declined. 

This  is  typical  of  many  instances  I  can  give  (the 
drift  of  which  needs  no  indication),  and  still  I  do  not 
wish  to  quote  it  or  them  as  eminently  characteristic  of 
the  spirit  of  the  country. 

No  more  do  I  wish  to  maintain  that  the  secretary  of 
the  said  mayor,  a  quite  humble  functionary  with  an 
official  salary  of  $150  a  month,  who  lives  at  the  rate 
of  nearly  $15,000  a  year  and  is  understood  to  be  grow- 
ing wealthy  (having  a  brother  a  judge,  he  can  secure 


344  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

for  any  one  a  favourable  verdict  for  a  definite  fee,  even 
to  acquittal  for  murder ! )  is  a  gentleman  in  whom  the 
spirit  of  the  country  shines  radiantly.  Many  such  as 
he  there  are  growing  rich  by  foulest  methods  of  corrup- 
tion, polluting  justice  and  public  life  by  their  every 
action,  yet  without  losing  the  esteem  of  their  fellow 
citizens. 

Rather  would  I  instance  the  children's  fondness  for 
balloons,  which  one  notices  everywhere,  as  more  in  tune" 
ivTtlrth e  sp i rit^o fjhe^Tounfiyi — Every-dHy  at  certain 
houTsTlhan  will  be  seen  bustling  down  Calle  Florida 
with  some  hundreds  of  penny  balloons  inflated  with 
gas,  taking  them  to  one  of  the  large  drapery  establish- 
ments, where  each  customer  may  receive  a  balloon  as 
a  present.  During  the  afternoon,  mothers  and  nurses 
and  children  innumerable  will  be  seen  about  the  streets 
with  their  balloons.  It  is  indeed  un  pais  de  ninos  - 
a  land  of  children !  Yes,  after  reviewing  all  the  vari- 
ous manifestations  of  the  national  spirit,  down  to  its 
love  of  the  morbid,  its  revelling  in  stories  and  scenes 
of  crime,  its  lack  of  humour,  I  am  persuaded  that  most 
representative  is  this  childishness.  Perhaps  it  is  be- 
cause the  Argentines  are  children  at  heart  that  they 
are  so  lacking  in  the  sense  of  humour.  Children  are 
notoriously  humourless,  though  they  may  be  the  cause 
of  infinite  humour  in  others.  The  keen  relish  of  life's 
lighter  side  comes  with  advancing  years.  So  with 
young  nations.  The  Argentine  is  not  old  enough  yet 
to  have  developed  the  sense  of  humour;  it  is  still 
seriously  young.  But  with  this  youth  it  also  has 
that  wonder  sense  which  is  the  privilege  of  all  youth, 
and  just  as  the  sand-built  castles  of  the  children  by  the 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  COUNTRY  345 

sea  shore  are  to  them  more  wonderful  than  the  Pyra- 
mids of  Egypt,  so  are  all  things  in  his  republic  to  the 
Argentine. 

Most  of  the_corruption  which  exists  in  public  life  is 
due  to  the  participation  of  Foreigners  therein;  Italians 
^chiefly.  That  will  pass.  The  nation  is  young  and  is 
gradually  adjusting  its  perspective.  The  boastfulness 
of  the  younger  generation,  so  irritating  to  the  visitor 
who  is  prepared  to  admire  all  that  is  worthy  of  admira- 
tion in  the  Republic,  is  another  fault  of  youth.  It  too 
will  pass.  The  young  Argentine  who  to-day  talks  of 
his  country  as  a  great  empire  of  the  future,  dominating 
not  only  the  Western  hemisphere,  but  influencing  pro- 
foundly the  whole  civilised  world  of  the  future,  is  still 
bien  jeune.  He  will  grow  older,  and  his  vision  of  the 
wonders  that  may  be  shall  grow  dimmer. 

Remains  the  fact  that  eminent  among  the  public 
men  of  the  Argentine  are  many  of  supreme  ability 
and  integrity.  Rather  let  us  think  of  them  than  of 
the  baser  sort.  They  are  the  true  patriots,  and  they 
also  once  were  young.  I  have  read  many  speeches  and 
articles  by  such  publicists  as  Dr.  Luis  Maria  Drago, 
Dr.  E.  S.  Zeballos,  Dr.  Quesada,  Dr.  Ramos-Mexia, 
and  Dr.  David  Pena,  (all  doctors  of  law,  the  use  of 
such  degrees  being  universal)  to  mention  a  few  only 
of  the  scores  of  names  that  one  might  muster,  worthy 
to  rank  with  the  best  expressions  of  modern  statesman- 
ship. With  these  leaders,  and  such  as  these,  the  Ar- 
gentine is  not  only  assured  of  material  progress,  but 
intellectually  equipped  for  a  future  which  will  see  the 
abolition  of  innumerable  abuses  that  darken  its  public 
life  to-day.  The  spirit  of  the  country  is  the  spirit  of 


346  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 


youth,  and  joj^,_j^_jw^Jgipj^,Jba5_its_faults.  But 
tfieFeTs  "  no  fool  like  an  old  fool,"  and  the  old  nation 
that  is  wedded  to  its  folly  is  of  human  institutions  ever 
the  most  hopeless. 

Such  follies  as  we  can  detect  in  abundance  in  the  Ar- 
gentine are  either  the  immediate  follies  of  youth,  or 
corrupting  influences  imported  from  Europe.  For  my 
part,  I  am  persuaded  that  the  people  as  a  whole  con- 
stitute a  nation  in  earnest.  With  their  heart  set  on 
progress,  small  wonder  if  its  material  forms  should 
first  engage  them,  but  there  is  no  lack  of  forces  making 
for  better  things,  and  if  at  the  moment  too  many  of 
the  younger  generation  of  Argentine  writers  seem  to 
have  fallen  under  the  spell  of  the  French  decadent 
school,  that,  too,  will  prove  no  more  than  a  passing 
phase.  There  is  a  far  finer  appreciation  of  literature, 
an  infinitely  more  important  body  of  national  literature, 
in  the  Argentine  than  in  Australia  or  in  Canada.  And 
there  is  a  certain  veneration  for  old  things  and  ancient 
culture,  not  usually  consonant  with  the  spirit  of 
youth.  Even  the  United  States  have  not  yet  entirely 
emerged  from  that  condition  of  youthful  disrespect 
inseparable  from  great  material  progress  in  a  young 
country.  In  the  Argentine  one  finds  a  very  remark- 
able degree  of  admiration  for  the  fine  old  things  of 
Spanish  civilisation.  Spain  was  a  harsh  mother  to 
her,  yet  she  is  remembered  as  the  mother,  and  her 
harshness  as  that  of  la  madre  pdtrla.  Her  glorious 
literature  has  the  profoundest  admiration  of  the  Ar- 
gentine. Still,  the  Argentine  is  never  blind  to  the  fail- 
ings of  Spain  and  the  conditions  of  his  national  life 
having  tended  to  put  a  finer  edge  on  his  wits  than 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  COUNTRY  347 

those  of  the  Spaniard  can  boast,  he  is  always  ready  to 
assert  his  independence.  A  good  instance  of  this  is 
furnished  by  an  anecdote  of  a  well-known  Buenos  Ayres 
abogado  who  was  present  at  a  lecture  by  the  eminent 
Spanish  novelist,  Senor  Blasco  Ibanez,  when  the  latter 
declared,  in  alluding  to  the  Spanish  colonisation  of 
South  America  and  the  West  Indies,  that  Spain,  after 
having  given  to  the  world  sixteen  children,  was  now 
exhausted.  The  acute  Argentine  lawyer  retorted: 

"  That  may  be  so,  but  England  has  had  more  chil- 
dren than  Spain ;  among  them  the  United  States,  India, 
and  Australia;  and  after  each  new  birth  she  has  gone 
forward  acquiring  new  strength,  and  greater  force." 

The  Republic  may  thus  be  said  to  look  towards  the 
motherland  for  her  culture,  but  to  the~Anglo-Saxons 
for  _socIaTltteafe'.~"'~She'  has  probably  looked  more  than 
sKeTTas  followed.  She  is  essentially  a  child  of  Spain, 
still  young,  but  entirely  independent  of  her  mother, 
with  much  character  of  her  own  and  a  willingness  to 
emulate  good  examples.  For  "  a  land  of  children," 
these  are  surely  conditions  that  will  make  for  great- 
ness when  it  has  grown  up. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE    LAND   OF  PAIN 

ALTHOUGH  by  no  means  a  nervous  person  or  one  so 
dotingly  fond  of  animals  that  h'e  exaggerates  every 
little  evidence  of  ill  treatment,  I  have  ever  taken  a 
keen  interest  in  animal  welfare,  and  what  I  have 
seen  during  my  stay  of  nearly  two  years  in  South 
America  has  led  me  to  look  upon  some  of  these  Latin 
Republics  as  almost  incredible  hells  of  suffering  for 
the  so-called  "  lower  animals."  I  am  much  tempted 
here  to  write  a  general  chapter  on  the  subject,  cover- 
ing  my  observations  not  only  in  the  Argentine  and  in 
Uruguay,  but  in  Chili,  Bolivia,  Peru,  and  elsewhere, 
for  it  is  remarkable  to  what  an  extraordinary  extent 
the  various  republics  differ  in  the  treatment  of  animals. 
The  Chilians,  for  instance,  are  moderately  careful  of 
their  horses,  incomparably  the  finest  in  South  America, 
while  dogs  are  allowed  to  multiply  like  so  much  vermin, 
and  throughout  the  country  hundreds  may  be  seen 
short  of  a  leg!  The  Indians,  on  the  other  hand,  and 
especially  those  of  Bolivia,  treat  horses  with  gentle- 
ness and  seem  on  the  friendliest  of  terms  with  their 
dogs,  while  even  the  large  troops  of  llamas,  the  bur- 
den bearers  of  the  Bolivian  plateau,  are  handled  with 
no  evidence  of  brutality.  In  the  Argentine,  however, 
horse  and  mule  and  dog  are  the  subjects  of  such  in- 
discriminate cruelty  that  it  will  be  sufficient  if  I  con- 
fine myself  to  recording  a  few  of  the  instances  seen  by 

348 


THE  LAND  OF  PAIN  349 

me  and  others  that  were  matter  of  common  report  dur- 
ing my  stay.  For  of  all  the  republics  mentioned,  the 
Argentine  is  most  deserving  of  the  title  wherewith  I 
have  headed  this  chapter,  noticeable  improvement  in 
the  treatment  of  animals  being  evident  in  Uruguay. 

It  is  difficult  to  explain  why  the  mere  crossing  of  a 
river  should  produce  a  change  in  human  character,  yet 
I  assert  that  the  lot  of  man's  friend,  the  horse,  is  far 
happier  in  Uruguay  than  in  the  Argentine.  It  may  be 
that  the  Uruguay  horse  is  of  better  quality,  better  fed, 
and  so  fitter  for  service,  thus  saving  the  driver  from 
the  need  of  thrashing  it  soundly  and  incessantly  every 
journey  it  makes.  But  I  am  not  so  sure  of  this,  for 
I  have  seen  Argentine  drivers  maltreating  fine,  spirited 
horses  just  as  severely  as  the  broken-kneed  and 
spavined  jades  so  commonly  seen  between  the  shafts. 

Or  perhaps  it  is  something  of  a  local  habit,  originat- 
ing, it  may  be,  in  the  inferior  quality  of  the  horse- 
flesh. Conceivably,  a  driver  who  has  only  found  it 
possible  to  make  his  horse  go  by  thrashing,  becomes 
so  habituated  to  the  act  of  thrashing,  that  every  horse 
coming  under  his  hands  will  receive  like  treatment, 
merely  from  long  practice  and  not  from  necessity.  Be 
the  reasons  what  they  may,  the  facts  I  deem  it  my  duty 
to  set  down  are  incontestable. 

As  a  lover  of  dogs,  I  was  particularly  interested  in 
watching  their  treatment  in  Buenos  Ayres,  and  I  am 
not  ashamed  to  confess  that  sights  which  I  saw  there 
haunted  me  for  days,  and  still  remain  indelibly  im- 
pressed on  my  memory.  First,  let  me  explain  the  ad- 
mirable system  of  the  municipality  for  cleaning  the 
city  of  all  stray  curs.  A  branch  of  the  sanitary  de- 


350  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

partment  maintains  several  wagons  which  every  day 
visit  different  districts.  Each  wagon  is  attended  by 
an  employee  in  addition  to  the  driver, —  an  expert  in 
the  art  of  throwing  the  lasso,  in  which  the  Argentine 
gaucho  is  unrivalled.  So  afraid  are  these  brave  fel- 
lows of  being  bitten  in  the  attempt  to  capture  some  poor 
diseased  or  dying  dog  which  ought  to  be  destroyed, 
that  they  lasso  them  in  the  public  streets,  and,  thus 
secured,  chuck  them  into  the  wagon.  The  dogs  are 
then  supposed  to  be  taken  to  a  general  depot  to  be  put 
out  of  existence  as  painlessly,  we  should  hope,  as  pos- 
sible. 

Now  this,  on  the  face  of  it,  is  no  bad  scheme  for 
ridding  the  city  of  canine  undesirables,  and  every  hu- 
manitarian should  applaud  it,  in  so  far  as  it  reduced 
the  stray  dogs,  nearly  all  which  are  diseased,  having 
for  that  reason  been  turned  adrift  by  heartless  owners. 
But,  unfortunately,  the  able  official  with  the  lasso  never 
thinks  of  capturing  a  stray  dog,  or  a  dog  it  would  be 
a  kindness  to  kill.  He  has  a  far  more  profitable  game 
to  play.  His  attention  is  devoted  to  lassoing  the  very 
best  dogs  he  can  see,  whose  owners  will  then  have  to 
go  to  the  depot  and  pay  anything  from  one  to  five  dol- 
lars, according  to  the  mood  of  the  gentleman  in 
charge,  to  have  their  animals  returned! 

The  audacity  of  these  official  ruffians  knows  no 
limits.  A  lady  of  our  acquaintance  was  out  driving 
with  her  little  daughter  in  their  private  carriage  one 
afternoon  and  had  allowed  their  pet  Pomeranian  to 
take  a  little  exercise  by  running  on  the  sidewalk  be- 
side the  carriage.  Suddenly  the  daughter  heard  the 
children  in  the  street  shouting  that  the  dog-catchers 


PLAZA  INDEPENDENCIA,  MONTEVIDEO. 

The  central  building  in  the  background  is  the  Government  House,  or  official 
residence  of  the  President. 


_     J 


THE  PLAZA  LIBERTAD,  OR  CAGANCHA,  MONTEVIDEO. 


THE  LAND  OF  PAIN  351 

were  coming  —  for  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  youngsters 
everywhere  that  they  run  ahead  of  the  dog-catching 
van  to  warn  people  to  secure  their  dogs  —  and,  stop- 
ping the  carriage,  she  leapt  to  the  pavement  to  secure 
her  pet,  but  in  the  very  act  of  lifting  it,  the  dog  was 
lassoed  and  torn  from  her  grasp.  No  appeal  to  the 
policeman  at  the  corner  could  restore  it  to  her,  until 
that  evening  when  her  father  could  attend  at  the  depot 
and  go  through  the  usual  formalities  and  part  with 
the  usual  bribe. 

This  disgusting  abuse  of  a  most  necessary  sanitary 
measure  leads  Buenos  Ayres  to  be  overrun  with  mangy 
curs,  some  of  which,  as  I  remember  them,  were  more 
like  horrid  creatures  of  a  nightmare  than  "  the  com- 
panion of  man."  In  particular  I  recall  a  large  Borzoi, 
from  which,  owing  to  starvation  and  disease,  every 
single  hair  had  departed.  Its  back  was  arched  like  a 
bow  pulled  taut,  and  its  legs,  once  so  straight  and 
handsome,  were  bent  and  pithless.  Yet  this  poor 
brute,  an  object  of  pitiful  horror,  with  its  red-rimmed, 
mournful  eyes,  looking  reproachfully  at  the  passers-by, 
was  to  be  seen  slinking  about  the  crowded  and  con- 
gested thoroughfares  day  after  day.  This  creature, 
which  was  not  an  old  dog,  and  perhaps  had  been  as 
handsome  as  those  rendered  popular  in  England  by 
Queen  Alexandra's  affection  for  the  breed,  had  prob- 
ably been  lost  to  his  original  owners,  and  months  of 
wandering  and  starving  must  have  elapsed  to  bring 
him  into  the  appalling  state  in  which  I  saw  him.  Sel- 
dom was  an  eye  of  pity  bent  upon  him;  nay,  I  have 
seen  boys  kicking  him  with  the  full  approval  of  the 
policeman. 


352  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Another  I  recall,  in  much  the  same  condition,  had 
been  at  one  time  a  fashionable  French  poodle  of  the 
large  black  variety,  but  his  skin,  to  which  only  a  few 
scraps  of  hair  still  adhered,  was  a  mass  of  sores,  his 
ribs  so  prominent  that  they  threatened  to  cut  through, 
and  the  animal  altogether  so  exhausted  that  as  he 
walked  along  the  busy  pavements  of  Maipu,  he  had 
every  now  and  again  to  sit  down  and  lean  against  the 
wall.  Yet  another,  I  noticed  on  a  wet  and  bitter  win- 
ter day.  It  was  a  little  silky  spaniel,  and  my  atten- 
tion was  attracted  to  him  making  efforts  to  jump  on 
the  step  at  the  door  of  a  grocer's  shop.  He  fell  back 
several  times  in  trying  this,  and  then  I  noticed  that  one 
of  his  hind  legs  had  been  cut  off  a  little  above  the  foot, 
and  the  same  accident  had  evidently  sliced  off  a  por- 
tion of  his  tail.  He  had  thus  a  bad  start  for  the  jump, 
but  when  I  came  nearer  I  found  a  bright  little  boy  in- 
side the  shop  door  who  had  evidently  kicked  the  little 
dog  each  time  it  jumped  up,  and  presently  it  continued 
on  its  hopeless  way  along  the  Calle  Viamonte. 

The  happiest  dogs  I  saw  in  Buenos  Ayres  were  those 
lying  dead  in  the  gutter.  Every  day  dogs  are  killed 
or  maimed  by  the  reckless  motor  cars,  as  there  is  no 
room  for  them  to  run  freely  on  the  pavement,  and  still 
less  for  them  in  the  roadway.  It  is  little  short  of  a 
crime  to  allow  a  dog  to  be  at  large  in  Buenos  Ayres, 
yet  so  perverse  is  fate  that  such  creatures  as  I  have 
just  described,  maimed  and  diseased,  linger  on  un- 
killed,  while  healthy  animals,  probably  well  cared  for, 
meet  swift  fate  beneath  some  of  the  myriad  motor 
wheels. 

Withal  I  would  not  have  you  suppose  the  Argentine 


THE  LAND  OF  PAIN  353 

is  essentially  and  invariably  cruel  to  his  dog.  It  is 
the  weakness  of  all  Latin  races  either  to  be  too  cruel 
or  too  kind.  There  are  many  dogs  in  Buenos  Ayres 
that  suffer  more  from  kindness  than  from  cruelty,  just 
as  an  Argentine  who  takes  a  real  interest  in  his  horses 
will  probably  spoil  them  by  over-feeding  and  under- 
working. That  well-balanced  average  of  good  treat- 
ment which,  on  the  whole,  is  more  characteristic  of 
the  Anglo-Saxons  than  of  the  Latins,  is  lacking.  At 
bottom  we  find  the  old  innate  carelessness  and  indif- 
ference of  the  race.  On  one  occasion  I  went  to  in- 
spect a  large  number  of  dogs  and  puppies  for  sale  in 
a  well-known  mart  in  the  Calle  San  Martin.  Among 
a  group  of  some  ten  or  twelve  beautiful  terrier  pup- 
pies, was  one  in  a  very  bad  state  of  distemper.  The 
attendants  of  the  place  were  either  too  ignorant  of  the 
fact,  or  so  utterly  indifferent,  that  they  were  making 
not  the  slightest  effort  to  prevent  the  whole  group 
from  developing  that  highly  contagious  fever.  There 
must  be,  I  think,  a  considerable  amount  of  ignorance 
to  add  to  the  carelessness,  for  I  was  informed  by  a 
native  that  his  landlord  had  that  day  sold  for  "fifty 
pesos  a  valuable  Great  Dane  because  it  was  developing 
rabies !  The  man  was  an  Italian,  and  he  scouted  the 
suggestion  that  he  had  done  anything  wrong  in  get- 
ting rid  of  the  dog  in  that  condition.  That  was  en- 
tirely a  matter  for  the  purchaser  to  find  out. 

In  the  matter  of  animal  disease,  it  came  with  some- 
thing of  a  shock  to  me  to  see  prize  cattle  at  the  Buenos 
Ayres  Agricultural  Show  suffering  from  foot  and 
mouth  disease,  or  aftosa,  as  it  is  known  in  the  Ar- 
gentine. Shall  I  be  believed  when  I  state  that  prize 


354  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

bulls,  so  far  gone  with  the  disease  that  they  could 
scarcely  crawl  round  the  paddock,  were  sold  at  auction 
for  substantial  sums?  Yet  when  I  got  to  know  that 
it  is  the  custom  in  South  America  to  nurse  the  animals 
affected  by  this  fever  back  to  health,  and  that  those 
sold  in  that  condition  were  only  disposed  of  subject  to 
their  recovery,  I  began  to  wonder  why  in  England  they 
take  such  stringent  methods  of  elimination?  It  is  a 
subject  on  which  I  possess  not  a  particle  of  expert 
knowledge,  but  surely  it  cannot  be  right  in  one  coun- 
try ruthlessly  to  destroy  every  animal  that  shows  signs 
of  foot  and  mouth  disease,  while  in  another  it  is  pos- 
sible to  sell  prize  animals  while  suffering  from  it.  The 
explanation  of  this  I  must  leave  to  my  bucolic  friends. 
Turning  now  to  the  question  of  the  horse  and  his 
treatment,  I  have  from  time  to  time  in  preceding  chap- 
ters been  forced  to  pass  some  strictures  on  this  sub- 
ject, and  to  mention  specific  instances.  Probably  the 
most  remarkable  and  suggestive  case  reported  in  the 
press  during  my  stay  was  the  following:  A  one-horse 
coach  was  passing  along  one  of  the  narrow  streets  to 
the  south  of  the  Avenida  de  Mayo  —  Peru,  I  think — • 
when  the  animal  fell  in  the  mud,  and  no  efforts  of  the 
driver  could  get  it  to  its  feet  again.  It  was  a  bitter  day 
of  blinding  rain,  and  while  the  poor  creature  lay  strug- 
gling in  the  slush,  blocking  the  traffic  of  the  narrow 
thoroughfare,  it  gave  birth  to  a  foal.  The  newcomer 
was  placed  in  the  coach,  the  mare  eventually  raised 
to  her  feet  and  harnessed  once  more  to  the  shafts,  the 
driver  taking  his  seat  and  thrashing  her  off  to  the 
stables  as  though  nothing  unusual  had  happened!  I 


THE  LAND  OF  PAIN  355 

wonder  what  the  good  folk  of  the  R.  S.  P.  C.  A.  would 
have  to  say  to  that. 

To  describe  one  tithe  of  the  cases  of  cruelty,  either 
personally  witnessed  or  coming  to  my  knowledge  dur- 
ing my  eight  months  in  Buenos  Ayres,  would  occupy 
many  pages  of  this  book,  and  I  shall  limit  myself  to 
one  more  in  particular.  It  happened  in  the  Calle 
Bartolome  Mitre,  one  of  the  most  congested  thorough- 
fares in  the  city.  It  was  again  a  rainy  day,  when 
horses  may  be  seen  falling  in  every  street,  owing  to 
the  absurd  regulation  which  prohibits  the  use  of  heel 
pieces  on  their  shoes  (perhaps  —  ye  gods!  —  it  is 
thought  these  might  injure  the  roads).  When  I  came 
on  the  scene,  this  horse  was  lying  in  a  helpless  condi- 
tion on  the  asphalt  with  sand  all  around  him.  The 
sand  had  been  brought  so  that  he  might  find  a  foothold 
in  his  struggles  to  rise,  but  the  poor  brute  was  far  be- 
yond struggling.  Everywhere  that  the  harness  had 
touched  him  he  was  marked  with  raw  flesh.  Under 
his  collar  was  a  ring  of  raw  flesh  around  his  neck;  the 
saddle,  which  had  fallen  loose  from  him,  disclosed 
great  patches  of  bleeding  skin;  the  girths  wherever  they 
had  touched  him,  left  bloody  traces,  and  every  move- 
ment the  poor  thing  made  peeled  off  the  skin  where  it 
touched  the  ground.  A  more  loathsome  spectacle  of 
inhumanity  I  have  not  seen.  This  horse  should  have 
been  shot  months  before.  His  skin  was  positively 
rotten,  and  in  places  green-moulded.  Yet  the  little 
Indian  policeman  from  the  corner  was  helping  the 
driver  to  raise  the  animal  to  its  feet.  This  they  were 
attempting  by  making  a  loop  of  the  reins  around  its 


356  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

neck,  the  policeman  pulling  on  this  with  all  his  might, 
so  that  by  partially  choking  the  horse  it  might  be 
tempted  to  struggle  to  its  feet,  while  the  driver  stood 
and  thrashed  it  with  his  whip  in  the  most  unmerciful 
manner,  every  stroke  breaking  the  skin.  All  to  no 
purpose;  it  was  too  lifeless  to  struggle,  and  lay  with  a 
mute  appeal  in  its  eyes  to  be  put  out  of  its  agony. 

I  personally  protested  to  the  policeman  against  his 
endeavouring  to  raise  the  animal,  which  was  clearly 
past  all  service,  and  he  frankly  told  me  to  mind  my 
own  business,  as  he  was  there  to  get  the  street  cleared. 
A  young  native,  however,  at  this  juncture,  came  along, 
and  seeming  the  only  person  other  than  myself  who 
was  in  the  least  interested  in  the  fate  of  the  horse,  I 
explained  to  him  what  had  taken  place  while  I  stood 
there,  and  he,  producing  a  card  of  membership  of  the 
Sarmiento  Society,  which  is  endeavouring  to  sow  hu- 
manitarianism  in  the  stony  soil  of  the  Argentine  na- 
ture, insisted  that  no  further  effort  should  be  made  to 
raise  the  horse  by  thrashing  it  or  partially  choking  it, 
and  that  it  ought  to  be  destroyed  immediately.  The 
policeman  was  disposed  to  listen  to  him,  as,  thanks  to 
this  society,  considerable  sums  of  money  have  been 
distributed  among  the  police  in  accordance  with  the 
number  of  convictions  they  have  secured  against  per- 
sons ill-treating  animals.  When  I  passed  the  spot 
some  hours  later,  there  was  only  the  sand  and  some 
clots  of  blood  to  be  seen,  and  I  know  not  what  had 
become  of  the  horse;  but  the  picture  of  it,  bleeding 
and  hopeless,  haunted  me  for  weeks,  and  remains  vivid 
in  my  mind's  eye  still. 

I  have  no  wish  to  harry  the  feelings  of  the  reader, 


CATHEDRAL  AND  PLAZA  MATRIZ,  MONTEVIDEO. 


PLAZA  INDEPENDENCIA  AND  AVENIDA  18  DE  JULIO,  MONTEVIDEO. 


THE  LAND  OF  PAIN  357 

and  I  have  personally  trained  myself  to  a  certain  de- 
gree of  fortitude  in  looking  upon  suffering,  for  I  am 
not  at  all  sure  that  the  Caesars  who  invented  and  main- 
tained the  Coliseum  at  Rome  chiefly  for  the  purpose 
of  hardening  the  populace  by  familiarising  them  with 
bloodshed,  were  not  wise  in  their  generation.  I  have 
no  patience  with  the  maudlin  sentimentalist  or  the  ultra- 
sympathetic  person  who  melts  into  tears  or  prepares 
to  faint  at  the  sight  of  blood.  For  such  as  they,  a 
few  months1  wanderings  in  the  streets  of  Buenos  Ayres 
would  be  an  admirable  training;  but  for  the  ordinary 
man  of  feeling,  it  is  a  purgatory  of  pain.  Horses  in- 
numerable, with  diseased,  swollen  legs,  broken  skin, 
and  bleeding  fetlocks,  are  familiar  objects  of  the 
streets.  To  horses  in  good  condition,  life  during  the 
warmer  months  in  Buenos  Ayres  is  bad  enough, 
plagued  as  they  are  by  the  myriads  of  flies  and  mos- 
quitoes; but  to  the  poor  animals  suffering  from  wounds, 
no  mind  can  imagine  what  their  torture  is,  for  these 
insect  pests  swarm  ever  to  the  open  wounds,  and  I 
have  seen  a  horse  almost  mad  with  agony  from  the 
clustering  flies  sucking  the  blood  at  an  open  sore  on 
its  body.  Sleep  is  impossible  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
a  cab  rank,  as  through  the  sultry  night  the  standing 
horses  will  be  heard  stamping  their  feet  in  the  most  irri- 
tating manner  on  account  of  the  plaguing  insects. 

Of  course,  much  of  this  ill-treatment  is  due  "  to 
want  of  thought  as  well  as  to  want  of  heart,"  and  we 
must  not  be  indiscriminate  in  denouncing  the  Argen- 
tine. I  have  seen,  for  instance,  two  fine  horses  yoked 
together,  one  of  them  in  a  state  of  semi-collapse  from 
high  fever,  obvious  even  to  me  that  has  no  special 


358  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

knowledge  of  horse-flesh,  by  its  nostrils  being  entirely 
stuffed  with  yellowish-green  matter,  while  it  tried  to 
rest  its  fevered  head  against  its  yoke-fellow.  This,  of 
course,  was  bad  economy,  the  one  horse  most  certainly 
infecting  the  other,  and  almost  certainly  both  of  them 
being  doomed  to  early  death.  But  at  the  back  of  it 
was  crass  ignorance  and  carelessness,  the  two  qualities 
so  eminent  in  all  service  throughout  the  Argentine. 

I  recall  also  a  coachman  thrashing  two  horses  at- 
tached to  a  heavy  wagon,  because  they  were  going  so 
slow.  The  man  was  losing  his  wits  with  rage  as  he 
madly  applied  his  whip  to  the  poor  brutes,  who  were 
struggling  and  sweating  to  move  the  wagon,  empty 
though  it  was,  along  the  road.  I  pointed  out  to  him 
that  he  had  omitted  to  undo  the  chains  with  which  the 
wheels  were  locked.  He  thereupon  jumped  down,  still 
in  a  state  of  high  dudgeon,  undid  the  chains,  and  got 
back  again  to  his  seat,  and  began  the  lashing  as  freely 
as  before,  but  certainly  with  better  result. 

"La  gente  aqui  ne  se  fija  en  nada"  (the  people 
here  don't  pay  attention  to  anything),  a  Spanish  friend 
of  mine  was  fond  of  saying.  His  experience  was  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  my  own.  Instructions  of  the  most 
explicit  kind,  given  for  the  discharge  of  some  little  task, 
were  never  by  any  possible  chance  correctly  carried  out. 
The  person  addressed  never  seemed  to  take  any  intelli- 
gent interest  in  what  was  being  said  to  him.  He 
nodded  with  a  confident  Si,  senor,  to  everything,  and 
comprehended  nothing.  The  sense  of  care  and  at- 
tention had  not  been  developed  in  him.  This  extraor- 
dinary failing  is  not  characteristic  merely  of  the  Ar- 
gentine, but  actually  exists  in  greater  degree  in  other 


THE  LAND  OF  PAIN  359 

parts  of  South  America.  It  explains  much  of  the  ap- 
parent apathy  to  suffering,  and  the  lack  of  care  for 
the  domestic  animals. 

I  remember  we  had  been  but  a  few  days  in  our  apart- 
ment at  the  hotel  when,  looking  out  of  a  window  one 
morning,  I  saw  a  woman  in  the  side  street  come  to  the 
door  and  throw  a  biggish  black  and  white  object  into 
the  street.  Presently  a  cart  came  along,  and  the  horse 
knocked  this  object  on  to  the  tram  lines.  Then  came 
a  tram  and  cut  through  it;  then  numerous  other  horses 
and  coaches  passed  over  it.  Taking  my  field  glasses, 
I  could  make  out  that  it  was  a  large  cat,  which  had  evi- 
dently died  overnight  and  was'  thus  disposed  of  by  its 
mistress.  Within  a  few  hours  it  had  been  so  pounded 
out  of  recognition  that  by  the  evening  practically  noth- 
ing of  it  remained.  This  I  afterwards  found  was  quite 
a  common  method  of  disposing  of  household  pets 
when  they  had  ceased  to  be,  forced  upon  the  people, 
perhaps,  by  the  simple  fact  that  few  of  the  dwelling 
houses  have  a  back  yard,  and  none  have  an  inch  of 
front  space. 

Where  such  indifference  to  the  welfare  of  men's 
animal  friends  and  helpers  exists,  humanitarianism  is 
necessarily  a  plant  of  slow  growth.  That  it  has  been 
planted,  the  Sarmiento  Society  serves  to  show,  and  al- 
though nothing  whatever  can  be  hoped  for  from  the 
Church,  which  is  supremely  indifferent  to  the  suffer- 
ing of  the  animal  world,  there  are  certain  warmer  hu- 
man qualities  in  the  Argentine  people  which  in  due  time 
will  triumph  over  the  present  era  of  active  brutality  and 
apathy.  Horses  are  too  cheap  and  food  too  dear  for 
their  lives  to  be  a  subject  of  solicitude  with  the  Ar- 


360  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

gentines.  If  these  economic  conditions  were  to  be 
modified  in  some  way,  that  might  also  help  to  a  change 
of  feeling. 

Best  of  all  would  be  the  passing  of  some  stringent 
laws,  and  their  enforcement.  For  when  it  has  been 
possible  to  work  such  a  revolution  in  the  treatment  of 
animals  as  we  have  seen  within  the  last  ten  years  in 
Naples,  previously  notorious  for  cruelty  —  a  revolu- 
tion due  entirely  to  the  initiative  of  the  Queen  of  Italy, 
who  invited  the  English  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Animals  to  organise  the  movement  there  — 
as  much  is  possible  of  achievement  in  the  Argentine. 
The  English  newspapers  of  Buenos  Ayres  frequently 
stand  forth  as  champions  of  animals'  rights,  and  prob- 
ably a  sufficiently  strong  public  opinion  may  yet  be 
formed  on  the  subject  to  remove  from  the  country  the 
stigma  which  at  present  it  undoubtedly  deserves  in  the 
title  I  have  here  applied  to  it. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW   IN   THE   ARGENTINE 

ALTHOUGH  there  is  a  great  deal  in  South  America  to 
appeal  to  the  sense  of  the  historic,  to  render  the  study 
of  the  past  interesting  and  profitable,  in  the  Argentine 
the  past  does  not  greatly  engage  anybody.  There  is 
a  general  concurrence  with  the  Oscar  Wilde  dictum 
that  the  best  thing  about  the  past  is  the  fact  that  it  is 
past.  Here  and  there  native  scholars  devotedly  tend 
the  lamp  of  History,  and  from  time  to  time  remind 
the  populace  of  past  events  worthy  of  celebration, 
whereupon  the  populace,  nothing  loath,  celebrates,  and 
every  electric  light  in  the  country  blazes  forth,  though 
it  might  be  difficult  to  obtain  from  the  average  citizen* 
a  really  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  event  thus  com- 
memorated. 

Speaking  broadly,  everybody  in  the  Argentine  is 
looking  forward;  few  indeed  are  they  who  pause  to 
take  a  backward  glance.  To-day  and  to-morrow  are 
the  things  that  matter ;  not  yesterday,  nor  the  day  "be- 
fore. And  to-day  matters  less_jhan— to-morrow.  I 
have  alrea~dy~ mentioned  the  propensity  of  the  land- 
owners and  venders  of  "  lots  "  to  discount  the  future 
in  their  sales.  This  was  confirmed  to  me  by  various 
gentlemen  acting  for  large  English  and  French  syndi- 
cates in  land  purchases  in  different  parts  of  the  Re- 
public. All  were  agreed  that  it  was  well-nigh  im- 
possible to  find  a  landowner  prepared  to  talk  business 

361 


362  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

on  the  basis  of  current  market  values.  Yet  I  was  told 
by  those  in  whose  judgment  I  have  the  fullest  confi- 
dence that  agricultural  land,  enormously  though  it  has 
increased  in  value  of  late  years,  is  not  yet  inflated  be- 
yond its  intrinsic  possibilities.  Certain  lands  examined 
with  the  greatest  care  by  two  Australian  experts  were, 
they  assured  me,  though  offered  much  above  their 
present  market  value,  obtainable  at  little  more  than 
half  the  price  of  similar  land  in  Australia.  Hence 
they  reasoned  that,  even  allowing  for  the  likelihood  of 
having  to  pay  more  than  a  legitimate  price  according 
to  actual  conditions,  the  possibility  of  buying  agricul- 
tural land  in  the  Argentine  which  would  depreciate  in 
value  was  very  remote. 

Mention  of  these  Australian  experts  reminds  me 
that  a  very  interesting  movement  was  noticeable  in 
1912  and  has  probably  increased  in  volume  since. 
Owing  to  the  excessive  and  vindictive  restrictions  which 
the  Labour  Government  of  Australia  had  imposed 
upon  property  holders,  many  of  the  large  Australian 
landowners  and  agriculturists  were  beginning  in  1912 
to  look  abroad  for  new  fields  where  they  might  invest 
their  capital.  The  Argentine  naturally  attracted  them, 
similar  as  it  is  in  many  ways  to  Australia  in  soil  and 
climate.  The  gentlemen  above  mentioned  represented 
between  them  a  potentiality  of  some  $20,000,000  of 
investment  in  Argentine  lands,  and  so  favourably  im- 
pressed were  they  with  the  splendid  possibilities  of  the 
soil  that  I  do  not  doubt  they  will  yet  become  —  if  they 
have  not  already  forwarded  their  negotiations  — 
owners  and  developers  of  large  tracts  of  Argentine 
territory,  the  folly  of  the  Australian  Labourists  driv- 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    363 

ing  their  millions  of  money  forth  from  the  land  where 
it  was  earned  to  fructify  a  foreign  country,  and  inci- 
dentally to  earn  greater  increase  for  its  owners. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that  everybody 
who  engages  in  land  speculation  in  the  Argentine  makes 
money  thereby.  In  all  countries  that  have  passed 
through  a  period  of  "  land  boom  "  there  will  ever  be 
a  larger  proportion  who  lose  than  gain.  Many  Eng- 
lish residents  in  Buenos  Ayres  engage  in  a  small  way 
in  land  speculation  as  a  "  side  line  "  or  hobby,  with  an 
eye  to  the  possibility  of  adding  to  their  incomes.  But 
those  with  whom  I  discussed  this  matter  nearly  always 
concluded  by  admitting  that,  so  far  as  they  were  con- 
cerned, the  game  was  not  worth  the  candle,  as  the 
anxieties  incident  to  the  speculation,  and  the  necessity 
of  watching  the  market  day  by  day,  constituted  a  seri- 
ous interference  with  their  ordinary  business,  which 
in  the  end  the  profit  hardly  justified.  At  the  same 
time,  one  heard  many  stones  of  fortunes  rapidly 
realised  by  successful  "  deals,"  that  seemed  to  make 
all  honest  work  for  payment  a  futile  farce.  Here  is 
one  of  many  instances. 

A  young  English  dentist  —  one  of  the  most  lucra- 
tive professions  in  the  Argentine,  by  the  way  —  was 
doing  very  well  in  Buenos  Ayres.  He  did  not  own 
his  premises,  nor  did  he  even  rent  them  direct  from 
the  owner.  He  was  no  more  than  a  lodger,  and  pos- 
sessed only  the  instruments  and  appliances  of  his  pro- 
fession. But  his  services  were  in  large  request  and 
well  rewarded,  so  he  ventured  upon  matrimony,  his 
sweetheart  going  out  to  be  married  to  him,  as  he  was 
too  busy  to  come  home.  The  young  wife  took  with 


364  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

her  a  considerable  quantity  of  furniture,  including  a 
fine  dining-room  suite,  the  gift  of  her  parents.  A 
house  was  taken  and  furnished,  and  the  dentist  still 
continued  to  carry  on  his  work  at  the  old  address  where 
he  rented  rooms.  Business  continued  excellent. 
Meanwhile,  a  friend  had  mentioned  to  him  that  a  cer- 
tain plot  of  land  was  for  sale  in  a  part  of  the  town 
where  values  were  bound  to  rise.  The  purchase  of 
this  required  the  total  savings  of  the  dentist,  but  he 
bought  it.  Soon  afterwards,  an  adjoining  plot  came 
into  the  market,  and  this  he  wished  also  to  acquire, 
but  lacked  the  capital.  Here  the  young  wife  sug- 
gested that  they  should  sell  off  their  furniture,  for 
which  they  could  secure  a  much  higher  price  than  it 
had  cost  in  England,  give  up  their  house,  and  go  into 
lodgings.  This  was  done,  a  good  profit  being  realised 
on  the  sale,  and  the  new  plot  bought.  So,  for  a  year 
or  two  the  young  man  went  on  increasing  his  property 
as  he  was  able,  'from  the  profits  of  his  profession.  In 
the  course  of  six  years,  the  land  he  had  thus  acquired 
had  not  only  increased  substantially  in  value,  but  be- 
ing let  out  for  building  purposes,  provided  him  with 
an  income  which  enabled  him  to  retire  to  a  beautiful 
home  and  small  estate  near  London.  This  is  no  fairy 
tale  of  a  land  vender,  but  a  brief  record  of  fact,  the 
beginning  of  which  does  not  date  back  more  than  fif- 
teen years. 

The  tales  of  fortunes  made  by  the  purchase  of  land 
in  Buenos  Ayres  during  comparatively  recent  years, 
which  one  heard  on  all  hands,  were  bewildering  in  the 
dazzling  possibilities  they  held  out  for  "  getting  rich 
quick."  I  was  shown  properties  that  in  ten  or  fifteen 


THE  "RAMBLA"  OR  PROMENADE  AT  POCITOS,  MONTEVIDEO. 


BATHING-PLACE  AT  RAMIREZ,  MONTEVIDEO,  SHOWING  THE 
PARQUE  HOTEL  IN  BACKGROUND. 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    365 

years  had  not  merely  doubled  in  value,  but  had  in- 
creased from  five  to  tenfold.  One  particular  site  I 
remember  near  Recoleta,  which  had  been  valued  at 
about  $30,000,  on  the  occasion  of  the  owner's  death 
in  1907,  was  sold  in  1912  for  upwards  of  $200,000. 
The  secretary  of  an  important  mortgage  company,  that 
rigidly  refrained  from  all  speculation,  mentioned  to 
me  several  instances  in  which  his  company  had  fore- 
closed and  sold  off  properties  to  recover  its  mortgages, 
where,  had  it  bought  the  property  at  its  auction  price, 
it  would,  in  the  course  of  a  very  few  years,  as  events 
proved,  have  earned  upwards  of  500  per  cent,  on  the 
capital  invested. 

With  all  these  alluring  facts  before  me,  and  with 
every  opportunity  to  acquire  Argentine  land  and  wait 
for  it  to  treble  or  quintuple  its  value,  I  own  not  one 
square  inch  —  not  even  an  8  per  cent,  or  10  per  cent, 
mortgage,  which  I  was  told  was  as  easy  to  acquire  as 
a  4^2  per  cent,  mortgage  in  England!  But,  acting  on 
the  most  reliable  u  inside  information,"  I  did  become 
the  owner  of  a  considerable  number  of  Argentine  rail- 
way shares,  and  at  the  time  of  writing  I  have  the  pain 
of  seeing  these  being  sold  on  the  London  Stock  Ex- 
change at  30  per  cent,  less  than  I  paid  for  them.  This 
reminds  me,  by  the  way,  that  an  old  English  lady  whom 
I  met  in  Buenos  Ayres,  on  a  business  visit  to  the  city, 
had  brought  with  her  some  hundreds  of  pounds  to  in- 
vest in  Argentine  railways.  She  was  much  surprised, 
and  not  a  little  disappointed,  when  I  advised  her  to 
take  her  money  back  to  London,  where  the  shares  could 
be  purchased  to  better  advantage.  From  bitter  per- 
sonal experience,  I  can  state  that  on  all  financial  mat- 


366  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ters  affecting  English  investments  in  South  America, 
a  London  stockbroker  can^give-efte-better  information 
than  can-be^ obtained  "  on  the  spot."  The  Stock  Ex- 
change of  Buenos  Ayres  I  found  ridiculously  ignorant 
of  possibilities  in  respect  to  shares  of  Argentine  enter- 
prises whose  registered  offices  are  in  London.  Thus 
the  investor  in  Argentine  public  companies  controlled 
from  London  can  do  a  great  deal  better  if  he  lives  in 
Hampstead  than  if  he  lived  in  Belgrano. 

On  the  other  hand,  investment  in  mortgages  and 
the  purchase  of  land  can  only  be  satisfactorily  trans- 
acted by  those  who  are  resident  in  the  country  or  have 
secured  a  thoroughly  reliable  person  to  hold  their 
power  of  attorney.  That  fortunes  are  still  to  be  made 
in  land  purchase,  and  that  splendid  incomes  are  be- 
ing derived  from  mortgages,  are  facts  that  cannot  be 
disputed,  but  the  nonsense  that  gets  into  print  in  Ameri- 
can and  English  journals  about  lucrative  investments  to 
be  secured  by'  the  simple  act  of  sending  out  your 
check  and  receiving  in  return  fat  half-yearly  divi- 
dends, is  of  the  most  reprehensible  character.  Some 
one  sent  to  me  an  English  daily  paper  with  an  article 
entitled  "  A  Safe  Eight  Per  Cent.  Argentine  Invest- 
ment." On  the  face  of  it,  all  looked  in  perfect  order, 
but  on  careful  analysis,  the  8  per  cent,  dwindled  to  6 
per  cent.,  after  allowing  for  bank  collection  charges 
and  the  fluctuations  of  exchange,  and  the  investment 
was  in  nowise  "  gilt-edged." 

It  may  be  possible  to  get  from  8  per  cent,  to  10  per 
cent,  on  a  mortgage  on  agricultural  land  in  the  Argen- 
tine, but  if  the  mortgagor  is  resident  in  the  United 
States  or  in  England,  by  the  time  he  has  met  a  variety 


TO-DAY  AND  TOMORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    367 

of  charges  for  the  collection  of  said  interest,  the  re- 
turn beyond  what  would  have  been  obtainable  from 
the  same  money  invested  in  a  home  industrial  concern, 
is  not  likely  to  reach  an  extra  2  per  cent.  More,  there 
are  all  sorts  of  little  difficulties  and  peculiar  customs 
to  be  noted  in  connection  with  Argentine  mortgages. 
For  instance,  a  mortgage  that  is  continued  beyond 
eight  years  may  become  illegal,  and  repayment  be  a 
matter  for  the  discretion  of  the  mortgagee !  It  is  thus 
a  common  custom  to  effect  a  mortgage  for  five  years, 
with  a  clause  providing  that  it  may  be  re-inscribed  by 
the  judge  for  a  further  period  at  the  end  of  three  years. 
An  important  consideration  is  the  provision  that  the 
mortgaged  land  shall  not  be  rented  for  a  period  longer 
than  the  duration  of  the  mortgage.  And  in  every  in- 
stance, no  matter  where  the  mortgagee  may  reside,  or 
even  if  his  land  be  a  thousand  miles  distant  from  the  fed- 
eral capital,  he  should  give  an  address  in  Buenos  Ayres, 
as  otherwise  any  question  of  legal  difficulty  is  intensi- 
fied to  the  point  of  impossibility.  I  have  already 
hinted  sufficiently  at  the  difficulties  of  securing  justice 
in  Argentine  Courts,  but  the  absentee  mortgagor  who 
becomes  involved  in  any  legal  question  with  a  native, 
resident  remote  from  the  capital,  and  has  not  pro- 
vided for  the  right  to  sue  that  native  in  the  federal 
capital,  may  as  well  give  up  hope  of  securing  satisfac- 
tion, no  matter  how  patent  his  rights  may  be.  There 
are  many  other  difficulties  in  the  handling  of  mortgages 
which  arise  to  cloud  over  the  bright  prospect  of  in- 
vesting one's  capital  in  that  way  and  so  deriving  a 
snug  income  to  keep  one  in  comfort  at  home. 

Nor  is  it  all  that  fancy  paints  it  to  be  owner  of 


368  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

land  in  the  Argentine.  Several  persons  of  my  ac- 
quaintance are  in  that  supposedly  enviable  position. 
In  one  case  a  lady  is  receiving  upwards  of  $10,000  a 
year  from  a  piece  of  property,  exactly  the  same  as  her 
sister  ten  or  twelve  years  ago  sold  for  a  sum  that  does 
not  yield  her  $1000  per  annum  in  a  5  per  cent,  invest- 
ment. This  lady  is  one  of  the  fortunate.  A  gentle- 
man owning  a  far  larger  property  has  had  to  spend  as 
much  as  eighteen  months  of  his  time  at  a  stretch  in  the 
Argentine  trying  to  let  it  to  advantage,  and  has  suf- 
fered all  sorts  of  losses  from  bad  tenants.  Yet 
the  gentleman  in  question  is  a  well-known  authority  on 
Argentine  land,  and  in  his  time  must  have  bought  and 
sold  property  aggregating  many  millions  of  pesos. 
He  is  now  resident  in  England,  and  if  anybody  goes  to 
him  for  advice  about  investing  money  in  Argentine 
land  (except  as  a  shareholder  in  a  land-investment  com- 
pany), he  will  pronounce  an  emphatic  "  Don't." 

During  my  stay,  there  was  every  evidence  of  a  com- 
ing "  slump  "  and  since  I  left  it  has  come  with  a 
vengeance.  Old-established  firms  which  hitherto  had 
enjoyed  the  highest  reputation  for  stability  have  gone 
bankrupt  in  dozens.  This  was  entirely  to  be  ex- 
pected; was  inevitable.  I  have  already  given  sufficient 
reasons  to  show  why  the  country  must  from  time  to 
time  pass  through  financial  crises;  that  of  1913-14  is 
no  more  than  a  momentary  pause  in  its  onward  prog- 
ress. It  has  been  largely  influenced  by  conditions  of 
universal  depression,  for  in  the  world  of  finance,  even 
more  obviously  than  in  that  of  humanity,  "  We  are 
every  one  members  one  of  another,"  in  the  Pauline 
phrase.  The  Argentine,  whose  development  has  de- 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    369 

pended  entirely  upon  European  faith  in  its  possibilities, 
whereby  colossal  sums  of  European  capital  have  been 
placed  at  its  disposal,  has  suffered  from  a  sudden  tight- 
ening of  the  European  purse  strings.  It  is  like  a 
young,  go-ahead  business,  which  has  gone  ahead  a  trifle 
too  fast  for  its  financial  resources,  and,  unless  it  can 
raise  some  fresh  capital,  is  in  imminent  danger  of  bank- 
ruptcy. Thoroughly  sound  at  bottom,  nothing  can 
well  stay  the  progress  of  the  Argentine,  and  the  mil- 
lions of  European  gold  that  have  been  poured  into  it 
have  served  to  create  new  sources  of  wealth,  whose 
ultimate  increase  an  hundredfold  is  as  certain  as  most 
things  mundane. 

Apart  from  natural  risks,  such  as  failure  of  crops 
from  drought,  excessive  rains,  or  locusts,  destruction 
of  cattle  and  sheep  in  millions  from  protracted  periods 
of  heat,  there  is  another  danger  to  which  the  Argen- 
tine is  peculiarly  exposed.  That  is  the  lack  of  a^set- 
tkdjDolicy  in  agriculture  an_d  cattle^ralsing.^  So  many 
oFmeestancieros  are  still^  experimentalists,  that  they 
are  apt  to  show  a  certain  aMnity  with  their  sheep  in 
following  the  mode  of  the  moment  rather  than  in  main- 
taining an  individual  and  well-conceived  working  policy 
for  their  lands.  From  all  that  I  could  gather,  the 
country  is  essentially  one  for  stock-raising.  In  the 
early  colonial  days,  so  stupendous  were  the  herds  of 
wild  cattle  roaming  the  plains,  that  settlers  were  per- 
mitted to  possess  themselves  of  three  thousand  head  — 
but  not  more!  This  will  indicate  how  cattle  may 
multiply  on  these  sunny  plains. 

It  is  doubtful  if  there  is  in  all  the  world  a  similar 
territory  so  admirably  adapted  for  stock-raising,  and 


370  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

on  its  live-stock  its  modern  prosperity  has  been  based. 
But,  not  content  with  the  profits  derived  from  this 
great  business,  estancieros  during  more  recent  years 
have  turned  their  attention  to  agriculture  rather  than 
to  cattle-raising.  The  reason  for  this  entails  but  little 
searching.  Provided  huge  crops  of  grain  may  be  se- 
cured from  land  which  else  were  pasturage,  the  rela- 
tive profits  are  vastly  greater.  Hence  it  became  the 
fashion  to  devote  more  attention  to  agriculture  and 
less  to  cattle.  With  what  result?  The  most  deplor- 
able. During  1912  and  1913,  the  public  press  wras 
voicing  the  national  alarm  at  the  tremendous  decline 
in  ganaderia.  In  such  wise  was  the  supply  of  cattle 
shrinking  that  large  numbers  of  cows  were  being  sent 
to  the  meat  chilling  establishments  (frigorificos) 
to  fulfil  contracts.  The  destined  mothers  of  future 
herds  were  being  slaughtered.  The  Argentine,  whose 
supplies  of  cattle  ought  to  be  without  limit,  was  ac- 
tually in  1913  Importing  live-stock  from  the  neigh- 
bouring Republic  of  Chili,  where  the  cattle  industry  is 
comparatively  in  its  infancy ! 

Here  is  a  state  of  things  that  might  well  spell  dis- 
aster. It  is  primarily  the  result  of  the  imitative  habit 
in  following  a  new  craze,  and  the  lack  of  an  established 
policy. 

If  alongside  of  this  declining  activity  in  stock-rais- 
ing there  were  an  enormous  countervailing  increase  in 
agriculture,  there  would  be  no  occasion  for  criticism. 
But  owing  to  the  uncertainty  of  the  seasons,  agriculture 
must  remain  in  the  Argentine  —  at  least  until  "  dry 
farming  "  has  been  perfected  —  a  more  speculative  in- 
dustry than  cattle.  Government  has  recently  taken 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    371 

measures  to  establish  the  North  American  dry  farm- 
ing, and  this  may  go  some  way  to  insure  the  agricul- 
turist against  seasonal  conditions  which  at  present  make 
him  a  highly  nervous  observer  of  the  barometer. 
Even  so,  and  admitting  that  the  agricultural  possibili- 
ties of  the  country  to  be  enormous,  its  essential  in- 
dustry, that  which  nature  seems  to  have  marked  out 
for  it,  is  cattle-raising.  So,  after  some  four  or  five 
years  of  crop  failures,  and  faced  with  a  scarcity  of 
animals,  estancieros  are  again  feverishly  turning  their 
attention  to  live-stock.  The  imminent  danger  is  that 
in  making  haste  to  recover  their  pre-eminence  in  cattle- 
raising,  they  may  undo  something  of  the  progress  they 
have  made  in  agriculture.  And  so  they  see-saw  from 
policy  to  policy.  This  is  bad,  and  so  long  as  it  con- 
tinues we  shall  see  these  periodic  panics.  A  more  set- 
tled system  is  bound  to  emerge,  more  individualised, 
and  based  upon  a  nicer  appreciation  of  local  conditions, 
for  the  climate  differs  throughout  the  Argentine  as 
widely  as  it  does  between  the  South  of  Spain  and 
Siberia. 

The  future  prosperity  of  the  country  is  not  a  matter 
of  doubt  to  any  person  who  has  travelled  across  its 
fertile  plains,  but  alLArgentine  prosperity,  whether  of 
Jo-day  or  to-morrow,  must  rest  upon  agriculture  and 
.cattle-raising,  the  latter,  perhaps,  bearing  the  greater 
proportion.  Here  lies  its  limitation.  He  is  no  true 
friend  of  the  Republic  who  paints  highly  coloured  pic- 
tures of  a  coming  day  when  workshops  in  the  great 
cities  will  hum  with  myriad  crafts,  and  industries 
flourish  as  we  see  them  now  in  the  great  industrial 
centres  of  the  Old  World  and  the  United  States.  The 


372  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

mechanical  arts  and  sciences  will  be  relegated  to  a  very 
humble  position  in  the  Argentine  activities  of  the  fu- 
ture, as  they  are  in  its  industrial  life  to-day.  You  can- 
not make  bricks  without  straw,  nor  can  you  work  ma- 
chinery without  power.  If  the  Andes  were  made  of 
solid  coal,  still  would  the  progress  of  the  Argentine  be 
slow  in  the  textile  and  mechanical  industries.  It  would 
cost  more  to  carry  the  coal  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard, 
where  the  industries  must  needs  have  their  centres, 
than  it  now  does  to  bring  coal  thither  from  England 
to-day.  But  there  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the 
Andes  contain  coal  in  any  considerable  quantities,  while 
we  do  know  that  the  only  coal  beds  at  present  being 
worked  on  the  Chilian  side  with  some  degree  of  suc- 
cess produce  coal  of  so  inferior  a  kind  that  it  is  only 
useful  for  mixing  with  imported  coal. 

Already  I  have  had  occasion  to  point  out  these  limi- 
tations, and  here  I  do  no  more  than  reassert  that  in  my 
opinion  the  future  of  the  Argentine  is  indissolubly 
bound  up  with  the  proper  adjustment  of  its  two  great 
national  industries.  Nature  has  intended  it  to  rear 
cattle  almost  without  limit,  and  to  produce  grain  for  the 
teeming  populations  of  Europe,  and  it  never  pays  to 
fight  against  nature.  It  may  be  that  some  day  rich 
gold  deposits  shall  be  discovered  in  still  unexplored 
corners  of  the  Andes,  where  we  know  that  copper,  tin, 
and  silver  are  to  be  found  in  abundance.  But  in  these 
things  there  is  no  permanence.  For  a  generation  or 
two,  gold  discoveries  might  modify  a  country's  prog- 
ress, and  might  eventually  do  a  great  deal  more  harm 
than  good,  as  it  is  to  be  feared  the  rich  nitrate  fields 
of  Chili  will  yet  do  to  the  sister  republic.  The  real 


MAIN  BUILDINGS  OF  MONTEVIDEO  UNIVERSITY. 


THE  SOLIS  THEATRE,  MONTEVIDEO. 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    373 

gold  is  the  fruitful  soil,  and  this  is  the  Argentine's  am- 
ple dowry. 

The  future  of  a  country,  however,  is  not  merely  a 
question  of  commercial  possibilities.  In  treating  of 
all  new  and  essentially  commercial  countries,  the  tend- 
ency is  to  forget  that  there  are  other  factors  to  be 
taken  into  consideration.  The  immediate  past  of  the 
Argentine  had  very  little  to  do  with  commerce.  Its 
history  is  little  but  a  story  of  more  or  less  sanguinary 
squabbles  between  political  parties,  or  the  struggles  of 
individuals  to  secure  a  temporary  ascendency  over  the 
mass.  It  is  really  not  an  inspiring  story,  the  political 
development  of  the  Argentine,  or  of  any  South  Ameri- 
can Republic.  It  has  its  great  moments,  but  they  are 
few  compared  with  the  long  unedifying  periods  of 
petty  bickerings.  All  that,  the  Argentine  put  behind 
it  when  it  suddenly  awakened  to  the  fact  that  if  it  be- 
haved itself  it  could  secure  substantial  loans  of  Euro- 
pean money  wherewith  to  develop  its  resources  and  so 
enrich  its  citizens.  The  revolutionary  era  is  past,  not 
entirely  because  the  spirit  that  informed  it  has  disap- 
peared, but  because  other  considerations  of  personal 
prosperity  are  now  involved  in  any  movement  that 
would  tend  to  discourage  the  faith  of  foreign  financiers 
in  the  country's  future.  The  energy  which  found  ex- 
pression in  the  days  of  revolution  has  not  ceased  to 
exist,  but  has  suffered  a  change  and,  transformed,  it 
is  at  work  in  the  political  world  of  to-day,  either  for 
good  or  for  evil.  On  the  whole,  I  think  for  good,  if 
I  have  read  the  signs  of  the  times  correctly  in  my  en- 
deavour to  define  "  the  spirit  of  the  country." 

Only  the  youthful  jingos  foresee  for  the  Argentine  an 


374  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

imperial  era,  with  the  country  lording  it  over  heaven 
knows  what  other  countries  of  old  Earth.  The  sane 
and  stable  mind  of  the  nation  is  set  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  sound  nationalism,  the  welding  of  the  whole 
cosmopolitan  population  into  a  composite  people. 
Such  dangers  as  beset  it  are  very  similar  in  kind  and 
degree  to  those  that  vex  European  politics  —  interna- 
tional jealousies.  Brazil  and  Argentina  do  not  under- 
stand each  other  any  better  than  Britain  and  Germany; 
and  probably  less.  When  in  April  1912,  ex-President 
Roca  went  as  Argentine  Ambassador  to  Brazil,  and  ex- 
President  Campos  Salles  as  Brazilian  Ambassador  to 
the  Argentine,  there  seemed  to  be  a  wiping  out  of  old 
jealousies,  but  these  will  only  completely  disappear  with 
increase  of  intercourse  between  the  two  republics,  and 
conditions  are  not  markedly  favourable  to  that,  as  a 
curious  feature  of  the  political  life  of  these  Latin- 
American  peoples  is  that  all  maintain  a  more  direct  in- 
tercourse with  the  Old  World  than  with  one  another. 

Although  the  Argentines  under  San  Martin  helped 
the  Chilians  to  throw  off  the  Spanish  yoke,  there  lin- 
gers something  of  old  rivalry  and  distrust  between  the 
two  nations,  notwithstanding  such  diplomatic  courtesies 
as  each  government  presenting  the  other  with  a  fine 
house  for  its  embassy  in  their  respective  capitals. 
Peru  and  Chili,  too,  while  making  much  parade  of 
cordial  relationships,  are  still  existing  in  a  state  of 
veiled  enmity.  In  fine,  South  American  politics  are 
just  as  full  of  international  jealousies  and  complica- 
tions as  those  of  Europe,  and  the  Argentine,  as  the 
most  progressive  of  these  powers,  must  depend  upon 
her  strength  and  preparedness  for  the  maintenance  of 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    375 

her  position  among  them.  The  Christ  of  the  Andes, 
that  giant  statue  on  the  Cordillera  frontier  of  the  two 
republics,  is  a  pious  expression  of  the  hope  that  Chili 
and  the  Argentine  may  never  go  to  war  again,  but  we 
know  that  these  pious  expressions  are  no  more  bind- 
ing than  inconvenient  treaties.  Hence  the  question  of 
armaments  is  an  important  one  with  most  of  the  re- 
publics —  with  Chili  probably  most  of  all,  but  only  in 
a  lesser  degree  at  present  with  the  Argentine. 

There  is  another  reason  for  this,  and  one  which  in 
Europe  is  little  understood.  The  North  American 
menace.  While  the  Monroe  doctrine  is  not  entirely 
despised  among  the  Latin  Republics,  the  Drago  doc- 
trine, formulated  by  the  great  jurisconsult  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  which  asserts  the  independence  of  their  na- 
tionalities and  maintains  the  principle  that  no  power 
by  force  of  arms  may  impose  itself  upon  any  of  them, 
is  much  more  acceptable  to  Latin  America.  The  Re- 
public of  the  United  States,  comparatively  little  known, 
and  exercising  very  small  influence  throughout  South 
America,  is  looked  upon  with  increasing  suspicion. 
The  making  of  the  Panama  Canal,  instead  of  appeal- 
ing to  South  Americans  as  a  great  new  factor  in  their 
economic  lives,  is  viewed  in  many  quarters  as  the  first 
step  towards  attacking  their  existence  as  independent 
nations.  The  United  States  are  suspected  of  an  ag- 
gressive policy  towards  the  South,  and  with  such  diplo- 
matists as  Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt  publicly  stating  at 
Rio  that  the  United  States,  in  alliance  with  Brazil, 
could  dominate  the  whole  western  hemisphere,  the 
road  to  a  better  understanding  is  not  made  unneces- 
sarily smooth. 


376  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

The  great  protagonist  of  the  "  anti-Yajikee  "  move- 
ment, which  is  steadily  gaining  ground  throughout  all 
the  republics,  is  a  Buenos  Ayres  gentleman  of  some 
local  celebrity  as  a  litterateur,  Dr.  Manuel  Ugarte.. 
He  has  stumped  the  whole  of  South  America,  and 
everywhere  he  has  been  received  with  open  arms.  As 
a  prophet,  he  warns  the  nations  of  the  danger  that 
threatens  in  the  North;  he  sees  in  the  Panama  Canal 
an  instrument  deliberately  prepared  by  the  United 
States,  not  so  much  for  her  own  commercial  expansion, 
but  the  better  to  impose  yanqui  authority  on  the  South- 
ern Continent.  He  has  no  difficulty  in  making  out  an 
excellent  case,  as  he  need  do  no  more  than  quote  from 
some  of  the  ravings  of  those  American  senators  who 
publicly  talk  of  "  one  flag  from  Pole  to  Pole  and  from 
Ocean  to  Ocean."  A  South  American  politician  may 
be  excused  if  he  does  not  readily  discriminate  between 
such  insensate  bombast  and  the  saner  United  States 
opinion  which  realises  very  well  the  impossibility  of 
bringing  the  mighty  Southern  Continent  into  the  Union, 
and  knows  what  a  handful  the  little  Philippine  Islands 
have  proved.  The  excuse  for  such  agitators  as  Dr. 
Ugarte  is  the  greater  so  long  as  Mr.  Roosevelt  is  al- 
lowed at  large  to  make  speeches  wherein  he  can  undo 
in  five  minutes  the  work  of  years  of  diplomacy. 

The  distrust  of  North  America  is  a  very  real  thing 
throughout  these  republics,  and  when  in  the  autumn  of 
1913  Mr.  Robert  Bacon,  formerly  American  Ambassa- 
dor to  Paris,  was  engaged  at  considerable  expense  by 
Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  and  sent  to  deliver  lectures  in 
all  the  South  American  capitals  on  behalf  of  "  Uni- 
versal Peace, "  his  mission  was  looked  upon  in  most 


TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  IN  ARGENTINE    377 

quarters  with  suspicion.  True,  he  was  received  with 
much  pomp  and  circumstance,  and  treated  with  great 
display  of  cordiality,  but  a  metaphorical  finger  was  laid 
to  the  national  nose  at  his  departure,  and  the  national 
eye  winked  knowingly.  As  one  gentleman  rather  co- 
gently observed  to  me,  when  the  said  Mr.  Bacon  was 
present  as  the  evangel  of  peace  in  Lima,  "  Why  doesn't 
he  pack  off  with  his  lectures  to  Mexico  just  now? 
That's  where  he  might  be  of  some  service,  as  we're  all 
quite  peaceful  down  here."  It  is  quite  useless  to  en- 
deavour to  convince  a  South  American  that  the  United 
States  have  not  as  deliberately  engineered  the  revolu- 
tion in  Mexico  as  they  are  supposed  to  have  done  that 
quaint  little  affair  in  Panama. 

This  of  the  future  is  certain  —  that  the  surest  way 
to  produce  an  alliance  of  all  the  South  American 
powers,  in  which  their  national  differences  would  for 
the  time  vanish  and  the  whole  join  together  as  one 
great  nation,  would  be  for  the  United  States  to  pursue 
a  policy  of  aggression  in  respect  to  any  single  one  of 
them.  To  an  extent  little  appreciated  either  in  North 
America  or  in  Europe,  these  South  American  repub- 
lics have  each  their  racial  distinctions,  and  in  all  there 
is  an  intense  feeling  of  nationality,  which,  rather  than 
diminishing,  is  steadily  growing,  and  is  the  object  of 
the  most  assiduous  cultivation  on  the  part  of  the 
leaders  of  the  people.  But  the  Drago  doctrine  is  vital 
to  their  national  destinies  and  the  very  reasons  that 
make  them  district  entities  would  unite  them  as  a  whole 
to  confront  a  common  enemy. 

In  the  development  of  South  America,  the  Argen- 
tine has  an  important  role  to  play,  and  as  that  coun- 


378  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

try  has  been  the  pioneer  in  putting  a  stop  to  the  old 
foolish  era  of  revolutions  and  internecine  strife,  turn- 
ing towards  Europe  not  only  for  ideals  of  political 
advancement,  but  for  that  material  help  which  at  once 
places  the  country  under  an  obligation  and  calls  forth 
its  own  best  energy,  and  is  the  best  pledge  of  peaceful 
intentions,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that,  despite  such  tem- 
porary set-backs  as  the  commercial  crisis  through  which 
it  is  passing  as  these  lines  are  being  penned,  the  Ar- 
gentine will  maintain  undismayed  her  political  and 
commercial  expansion  to  splendid  issue. 


CHAPTER  XX 

OUR   SUMMER   IN   MONTEVIDEO 

No  matter  how  little  we  may  love  a  place,  we  shall 
surely  feel  some  sentiment  of  regret  at  leaving.  If  I 
had  been  told  after  my  first  few  weeks  in  Buenos  Ayres 
that  I  might  come  to  entertain  a  kindly  feeling  towards 
that  stony-hearted  city,  I  doubt  not  that  I  should  have 
scouted  the  suggestion.  And  yet  when  it  came  to  say- 
ing good-bye  to  the  friends  we  had  made,  taking  a  fare- 
well look  at  the  scenes  amidst  which  for  eight  months 
it  had  been  our  lot  to  live,  and  setting  our  faces  to- 
wards another  town,  a  different  country,  and  new  con- 
ditions of  life,  Buenos  Ayres  did  appear  almost 
friendly.  The  long,  low  line  of  flickering  lights 
stretching  for  many  miles  by  the  river-side,  and  inland 
a  myriad  others  picking  out  the  topography  of  the  great 
city,  seemed  more  picturesque  than  I  had  hitherto 
thought,  as  we  looked  upon  them  that  sultry  Decem- 
ber night  when  we  steamed  away  from  the  Darsena 
Sud  on  our  night  journey  to  Montevideo. 

During  our  stay  in  the  Argentine,  I  had  had  occa- 
sion to  make  various  journeys  to  and  from  Monte- 
video, nor  was  this  to  be  our  last  sight  of  Buenos 
Ayres;  yet  the  occasion  was  different  from  all  others 
in  so  far  as  it  betokened  the  completion  of  one  stage 
of  our  life  in  South  America  and  the  beginning  of  an- 
other, to  which  we  had  long  looked  forward  with  the 
pleasantest  anticipation,  for  Montevideo  had  left  on 

379 


380  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

us  both  a  very  favourable  first  impression  when  we 
spent  a  day  there  on  our  outward  journey. 

The  dreaded  summer  heat,  which  makes  life  a  bur- 
den in  Buenos  Ayres  from  the  Christmas  season  until 
the  end  of  March,  was  just  beginning,  but  good  for- 
tune had  decreed  that  we  should  spend  our  first  South 
American  summer  in  the  airier  city  of  Montevideo.  It 
is  surprising  how  greatly  the  towns  with  only  some 
125  miles  of  river  between  them  may  differ,  not  only 
in  climatic  conditions,  but  in  general  character.  The 
peculiar  position  of  Montevideo  has  given  to  the  place 
its  benigner  climate,  for  it  is  in  the  same  zone 
as  Buenos  Ayres,  and  the  visitor  might  expect  little 
difference  in  the  climatic  conditions  of  the  two  cities. 
Lying  on  the  north  bank  of  the  River  Plate  estuary, 
at  a  point  where  it  is  difficult  to  tell,  except  by  the 
tinge  of  the  water,  whether  it  is  river  or  ocean  that 
laves  its  shores,  the  older  part  of  the  town  is  built 
upon  a  little  tongue  of  land  that  thrusts  itself  into  the 
water,  forming  westward  a  very  beautiful  bay,  with  a 
picturesque  cone-shaped  hill  at  the  western  extremity, 
while  seaward  a  smaller  bay  indents  the  rocky  coast, 
and  on  another  tongue  of  land  the  more  modern 
suburbs  of  Ramirez  and  Pocitos  have  been  built.  The 
old  town  is  thus  a  little  peninsula,  and  in  many  of  its 
streets  one  may  look  east  and  west  to  water.  Hence 
there  is  hardly  a  day  of  the  year  when  refreshing  sea 
breezes  do  not  send  their  draughts  of  ozone  through 
the  streets.  The  modern  city  has  far  outgrown  its 
original  site  and  extends  now  in  many  fine  avenues  of 
handsome  suburbs  for  miles  around  the  bay  and  in- 
land. 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          381 

The  first  impression  of  the  Uruguayan  capital  is 
that  oT"an  esse!TtraHy~Tiuropean  city7  clean  anbT  well 
buikr  -Stone  is remploye3~TolTgHat~er  degree  in  its  ar- 
chitecture than  in  that  of  Buenos  Ayres,  though  most 
of  the  modern  structures  are  of  the  steel  frame  and 
cement  variety.  The  older  part  is  still  regarded 
as  "  the  centre,"  chiefly  for  its  nearness  to  the  har- 
bour, and  because  it  contains  most  of  the  popular 
shopping  streets,  but  in  reality  it  is  now  the  fringe, 
and  with  the  future  expansion  of  the  city  the  centre  of 
social  gravity  will  surely  shift  a  mile  or  more  inland. 
Here  are  congregated  all  the  banking  establishments, 
the  Bolsa  de  comercio,  the  shipping  offices,  and  the 
warehouses  of  the  large  importing  firms.  Here,  too, 
in  the  Plaza  Constitucion,  we  find  the  handsome,  if 
somewhat  modest,  Cathedral,  and  the  historic  House 
of  Representatives,  an  unimpressive,  two-story  build- 
ing occupying  the  opposite  corner  of  the  plaza,  its 
lower  story  being  utilised  by  the  police  authorities  as 
prison  and  court  of  justice.  The  Uruguay  Club  has 
an  attractive  building  —  far  finer  in  every  respect  than 
that  of  the  Cdmaras  —  in  this  plaza,  while  the  friendly 
English  Club  looks  across  at  it  from  its  humbler  but 
very  cosy  quarters  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  square, 
hard  by  the  offices  of  El  Siglo  and  La  Razon. 

The  streets  in  this  neighbourhood  are  all  of  the 
narrow,  colonial  kind,  and  being  chiefly  paved  with 
stone,  the  noise  of  the  traffic,  together  with  the  con- 
tinuous passing  of  electric  trams,  which  run  in  almost 
every  street  and  maintain  a  nerve-racking  ringing  of 
bells,  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  amount  of  busi- 
ness represented.  "  We  are  fast  asleep  here,"  is  a 


382  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

frequent  saying  of  the  self-depreciative  natives,  and 
if  it  be  true,  I  can  only  suppose  they  are  abnormally 
sound  sleepers,  as  the  noise  of  the  streets,  chiefly  due 
to  the  tramways,  might  at  times  waken  a  cemetery. 

When  we  two  Gringos  began  our  summer  stay  in 
the  city,  we  chose  what  seemed  to  be  extremely  com- 
fortable quarters  in  the  best-known  hotel,  occupying 
an  ideal  position  in  the  Plaza  Constitution,  or  Plaza 
Matriz  (after  the  Cathedral  or  "  mother  church  "), 
as  it  is  indifferently  called.  There  on  the  third  story 
we  had  a  spacious  room  with  balconies  overlooking  the 
animated  square,  and  a  little  writing-room  set  in  a  tur- 
ret, whence  the  pleasantest  glimpses  could  be  obtained 
in  many  directions.  The  food  of  the  hotel  (as  we 
knew  from  previous  experience)  was  incomparably 
better  than  anything  to  be  had  in  Buenos  Ayres.  In- 
deed, it  is  renowned  throughout  the  River  Plate  dis- 
trict for  its  excellent  cuisine,  for  which,  by  the  way, 
its  charges  rival  those  of  quite  expensive  New  York 
restaurants,  and  that  is  saying  a  good  deal. 

Thus  it  might  have  been  supposed  we  were  in  for  an 
agreeable  change  from  our  experiences  on  the  other 
side  of  the  river.  Resembling  a  quiet  backwater  to 
the  great  turbulent  main  stream  in  comparison  with  its 
mighty  commercial  neighbour,  one  might  have  expected 
here  in  Montevideo  to  find  quiet.  Certainly,  in  some 
of  its  suburban  districts,  such  a  search  would  not  be 
fruitless,  but  the  restfulness  once  secured  would  only 
coexist  with  dulness,  and  after  all  it  were  thus  a  choice 
of  evils.  In  any. case,  it  better  suited  my  affairs  that 
we  should  live  in  the  centre  of  the  town,  where,  in- 
deed, dwellings  of  all  kinds  mingle  familiarly  with 


SCENE  IN  THE  PARQUE  URBANO  OF  MONTEVIDEO. 


"RAL    GLIMPSE   IN   THE    PRADO,    MONTEVIDEO. 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          383 

shops  and  warehouses.  How  we  fared  at  our  hotel 
may  be  gathered  from  the  following  passages,  with 
which  I  find  I  began  an  essay  on  a  literary  subject  while 
living  in  the  town: 

I  have  left  my  room  with  the  turret  window  that  overlooked 
the  pleasant  Plaza  Matriz.  It  was  perfectly  planned  for  the 
meditative  life,  and  but  for  the  vileness  of  man  and  the  supine- 
ness  of  the  municipal  authorities  one  could  have  passed  some 
months  tolerably  there,  looking  out  upon  the  panorama  of 
Montevidean  life  and  setting  one's  thoughts  on  paper  when 
the  mood  came.  But  the  men  who  drive  motor  cars  in  this  far 
land  are  the  vilest  of  the  breed.  The  plaza  is  filled  with 
gorgeous  cars  that  ply  for  hire,  each  handled  by  a  rascal  who 
is  no  better  than  a  highway-robber  by  day  and  a  beast  of  prey 
by  night.  The  law  of  the  town  prohibits  the  use  of  the  "  cut 
out,"  or  opening  of  the  exhaust  pipe  of  the  motor,  but  no  one 
respects  the  law,  and  it  is  the  custom  for  the  demons  who 
drive  these  cars  to  keep  one  foot  all  the  time  on  the  pedal 
which  opens  the  exhaust!  The  consequent  noise  is  so  appal- 
ling that  the  main  streets  of  Montevideo  have  become  a  veri- 
table pandemonium. 

Thus  bad  begins,  but  worse  continues  when  the  hour  has 
passed  midnight.  The  endless  stream  of  electric  "  trams " 
with  hideous  clanging  of  superfluously  clamorous  bells  goes 
on  till  two,  mingled  with  every  variety  of  motor  noises;  then 
between  two  and  four  the  motorists  delight  to  "  test "  their 
engines,  running  round  the  plaza  with  open  exhausts!  Sleep 
is  impossible,  especially  when  you  add  a  temperature  anywhere 
between  80  and  90,  and  mosquitoes  buzzing  through  your  room 
athirst  for  your  blood. 

So  we  are  no  longer  tenants  of  "  the  room  with  a  view." 
After  some  weeks  of  suffering  bravely  borne,  we  have  fled  the 
hotel  and  are  now  living  seaward  in  the  Calle  Sarandi,  where 
there  is  no  view  by  day  and  few  motors  by  night,  and  where 


384  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  noise  of  the  electricos  only  keeps  one  awake  until  two  in 
the  morning.  How  soon  one  becomes  thankful  for  small  mer- 
cies in  lands  of  little  comfort! 

But  after  all  we  were  lucky  in  Montevideo,  for  by 
some  providential  arrangement  it  was  decided  to  re- 
make the  principal  streets  of  the  city,  relaying  them 
with  asphalt,  and  this  involved  the  upsetting  of  the 
whole  elaborate  tramway  system,  whereby  certain 
streets  were  for  several  months  debarred  the  privilege 
of  the  electricos.  Sarandi,  where  we  had  settled  our- 
selves very  comfortably  in  the  home  of  a  foreign  con- 
sul, was  thus,  after  our  first  few  weeks,  deprived  of 
its  tram-cars,  and  except  during  the  time  of  Carnival, 
our  surroundings  there  were  as  quiet  as  in  a  country 
village.  Not  until  within  a  few  days  of  the  end  of 
our  stay  of  nearly  five  months  did  the  cars  begin  again. 

Montevideo,  like  most  of  the  South  American  cities 
in  which  it  has  been  my  lot  to  linger  for  a  time,  seems 
to  me  to  be  greatly  "  over-trammed."  There  is 
hardly  a  street  along  which  tramcars  do  not  rattle  at 
all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  and  how  they  pay  is  to 
me  something  of  a  mystery,  for  they  may  be  seen  in 
streams  going  their  noisy  rounds,  empty  or  with  a 
mere  handful  of  passengers.  Many  a  time  have  I 
seen  a  half-dozen  pass  along  at  intervals  of  fifty  yards, 
and  the  total  passengers  carried  would  be  two  or  three 
negroes  and  a  sleeping  Italian.  One  street  in  par- 
ticular, the  Calle  Rincon,  where  we  narrowly  escaped 
the  calamity  of  renting  rooms,  is  probably,  for  its 
length,  without  an  equal  in  any  city  for  the  quantity  of 
cars  that  pass  through  it  per  hour.  It  is  a  short  and 
narrow  street,  and  I  doubt  if  at  any  moment  of  the  day, 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO  385 

from  four  or  five  in  the  morning  till  two  the  next  morn- 
ing, while  the  electric  cars  are  running,  Rincon  can  be 
seen  without  one.  At  times  I  have  counted  fifteen  or 
sixteen,  with  only  a  few  yards  between  each,  and  yet  foot 
passengers  in  this  street,  as  in  most  of  the  highways  and 
byways  of  the  city,  are  few. 

The  tramway  system  is  curiously  arranged,  and 
while  grossly  oversupplying  the  business  part  of  the 
town,  undersupplies  the  farther  suburbs.  Imagine  the 
aforesaid  peninsula  on  which  the  older  part  of  the  city 
stands,  as  the  handle  of  a  fan,  and  all  the  outspread 
part  of  the  fan  as  the  remainder  of  the  city,  every  rib 
extending  from  the  handle  as  a  tramline,  and  there  you 
have  very  roughly  a  map  of  the  Montevideo  system. 
Picture,  then,  how  congested  the  handle  becomes  as  the 
cars  rattle  inward  from  all  parts  of  the  fan,  turn  round 
in  the  handle,  and  set  forth  once,  more  to  the  outer 
parts !  All  the  same,  I  am  far  from  complaining  about 
the  service,  for  once  the  system  is  clearly  under- 
stood, it  is  found  to  work  admirably,  and  enables  one 
to  reach  all  parts  of  the  wide-spreading  town  with 
comparative  ease  and  at  little  expense,  the  regulation 
fare  for  a  journey  of  a  few  hundred  yards  or  two  miles 
being  4  cts. 

As  I  have  indicated,  there  is  no  lack  of  public 
motor  cars  for  hire,  but  the  rate  is  so  excessive  that, 
except  for  those  on  holiday  bent,  it  is  prohibitive. 
Personally,  I  made  occasional  use  of  them,  though  the 
necessity  of  paying  something  like  $4  or  $5  for  a  jour- 
ney of  some  three  or  four  miles  from  the  Plaza  Matriz 
and  back,  with  a  comparatively  short  wait,  added  to 
the  reckless  manner  in  which  the  car  would  be  driven, 


385  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

did  not  commend  them  to  me  for  frequent  use,  while 
the  stony  streets  made  a  journey  in  a  coche  extremely 
unpleasant.  The  native  newspapers  were  continually 
agitating  against  the  iniquitous  charges  of  the  hired 
motor  cars,  whose  tariff  was  based  upon  the  cupidity 
of  the  highwayman  in  charge,  and  what  he  deemed  the 
limit  he  might  bleed  from  his  victim,  the  fare.  I  re- 
member one  evening  being  attracted  to  a  large  crowd 
assembled  around  one  of  these  cars,  and  found  an  Irish 
porteno  from  Buenos  Ayres  in  the  hands  of  the  police, 
while  his  wife  and  sister-in-law  were  in  a  state  of  great 
excitement  at  the  possibility  of  losing  that  night's 
steamer.  It  appeared  that  the  driver  of  the  car  he 
had  hired  to  take  him  and  the  ladies  to  the  landing 
stage  had  marked  up  on  the  taximeter  certain  charges 
warranted  by  his  tariff,  but  so  grossly  excessive  even  to 
Buenos  Ayres  ideas,  that  the  porteno  immediately  pro- 
tested and  would  not  proceed  in  the  car.  He  also  re- 
fused to  accept  my  advice  to  pay  up  and  catch  his  boat. 
I  did  not  linger  to  see  the  final  issue  of  the  dispute, 
but  the  cause  of  it  was  typical  of  many  little  differences 
one  was  to  discover  which  made  life  in  Montevideo 
considerably  more  expensive  than  in  Buenos  Ayres. 

Mention  of  the  police,  by  the  way,  reminds  me  that 
they  are  one  of  the  most  engaging  features  of  the  town 
to  the  Gringo.  If  the  authorities  had  advertised  for 
the  most  undersized,  debilitated  and  ignorant  members 
of  the  community  that  could  be  found,  they  could  not 
possibly  have  excelled  the  extraordinary  collection  of 
miserable  humanity,  clothed  in  ill-fitting  uniforms, 
used  as  sentinels  at  every  other  street  corner.  Many 
of  these  police  are  Indian  half-castes  or  Negro-Indian 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO  387 

meztisos.  They  are  wretchedly  paid,  and  seem  in- 
capable of  all  responsibility,  as  their  efforts  to  direct 
the  traffic  are  ignored,  and  were  they  followed  would 
lead  to  more  confusion  than  order.  Hardly  any  of 
them  —  with  helmets  two  or  three  sizes  too  large,  their 
trousers  so  long  that  they  bag  about  their  boots,  over 
which,  by  the  way,  they  wear  white  spats,  their  ill-fit- 
ting coats  of  blue  caught  at  the  waist  with  a  belt,  from 
which  depends  a  sword  —  is  sufficiently  educated  to 
write  his  name. 

There  are  two  classes  in  the  service,  however,  the 
superior  policeman,  with  sufficient  education  to  write 
a  report  of  any  occurrence  and  exercise  authority,  be- 
ing mounted,  and  when  anything  happens,  the  man- 
nikin  at  the  corner  blows  his  whistle  (which  he  uses 
to  the  disturbance  of  the  town  at  frequent  intervals 
through  the  day  and  night,  merely  to  advertise  that  he 
is  still  at  his  corner)  and  presently,  answering  the  call, 
along  clatters  on  horseback  one  of  the  superior  class, 
presumably  competent  to  deal  with  the  case.  On  the 
whole,  the  police  service  struck  me  as  inferior  to  that 
of  Buenos  Ayres,  and  I  imagine  that,  shameful  though 
the  wages  of  the  Buenos  Ayres  police  may  be,  those  of 
the  lower  class  in  Montevideo  must  be  still  less.  Yet 
these  policemen  are  regarded  as  so  much  fighting  ma- 
terial for  the  Government,  and  it  used  to  be  the  prac- 
tice, on  the  outbreak  of  a  revolution,  to  send  forward 
the  police  as  the  first  objects  (objects,  indeed,  they 
are!)  to  be  fired  at  by  the  revolutionaries.  The  or- 
ganisation is  a  quasi-military  one,  and  so  fond  do  some 
of  the  agentes  appear  to  be  of  saluting,  that  every 
time  I  crossed  the  Plaza  Zabala,  I  had  to  undergo  the 


388  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ordeal  of  receiving  a  full  military  salute  from  the 
elderly  policeman  at  the  corner  of  one  of  the  streets 
converging  on  that  square,  so  that  to  avoid  this  atten- 
tion I  frequently  chose  another  route. 

The  people  that  pass  in  the  street  present  certain 
points  of  contrast  with  the  passers-by  in  Buenos  Ayres. 
Clearly  the  writer  in  a  North-American  encyclopaedia 
who  stated  that  Montevideo  was  "  one  of  the  most 
cosmopolitan  towns  in  South  America  "  was  scarcely 
entitled  to  the  editorial  description  of  "  authority  on 
Latin  America."  I  remember  also  that  the  same 
writer  alleged  there  were  no  fewer  than  sixteen  public 
squares  in  the  city,  which  assertion,  together  with  that 
already  mentioned,  leads  me  to  suspect  he  never  saw 
it  with  his  own  eyes.  Cosmopolitanism  is  precisely 
the  last  impression  one  is  likely  to  carry  away  from 
Montevideo.  Italians  are  to  be  seen  in  considerable 
numbers,  but  the  appearance  of  the  people  as  a  whole 
is  essentially  Spanish.  The  Iberian  type  has  been  bet- 
ter preserved  here  than  on  the  other  side  of  the  river; 
Spanish  character  informs  the  life  of  the  people  to  a 
larger  extent.  French  and  German  residents  there 
are,  but  in  numbers  so  inconsiderable  that,  even  to- 
gether with  the  English  and  American  population,  they 
represent  a  very  small  percentage  of  the  whole.  After 
the  Italians  and  Spaniards,  the  largest  foreign  element 
is  probably  Brazilian,  which  in  the  general  population 
of  the  country  exceeds  the  French  and  all  other  na- 
tionalities combined,  exclusive  of  the  Argentines.  In 
fact,  there  is  little  similarity  in  the  composition  of  the 
populations  that  exist  on  the  opposing  banks  of  the 
River  Plate. 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          389 

Such  foreign  element  as  one  sees  in  the  streets  is 
chiefly  representative  of  the  casual  visitors  brought  to 
the  town  for  a  few  hours,  a  day  or  so,  by  the  numerous 
steamers  that  make  it  a  port  of  call  on  their  way  to 
or  from  Buenos  Ayres  or,  by  the  Straits  of  Magellan, 
to  or  from  the  Pacific  Coast.  Groups  of  fair-headed 
Germans  and  fresh-complexioned  Britons  are  thus  fre- 
quently to  be  met  wandering  about  from  plaza  to  plaza 
during  the  brief  stay  of  their  ships  in  the  roadstead. 
Australian  vessels  also  touch  at  Montevideo,  and  then 
one  will  notice  groups  of  twenty  or  thirty  odd-looking 
people  straying  somewhat  timorously  along  the  un- 
familiar streets,  their  garb  leaving  one  in  doubt  as  to 
whence  they  hail,  though  the  usually  dowdy  appearance 
of  their  womenkind  permits  no  possible  doubt  of  their 
Anglo-Saxon  origin. 

The  women  of  Montevideo  are  celebrated  through- 
out South  America  for  their  beauty  and  elegance  of 
manners.  In  this  regard,  the  town  enjoys  something 
of  the  European  fame  of  Buda-Pesth,  and  certainly  no 
Oriental  (the  Uruguayan,  by  the  way,  likes  to  be 
known  as  an  Oriental,  the  proper  style  of  the  republic 
being  Republica  Oriental  del  Uruguay)  ever  talks  to 
a  Gringo  about  his  capital  city  without  mentioning  that 
it  is  celebrated  for  its  I'm  das  mujeres.  True  enough,  it 
deserves  its  reputation  as  a  town  of  beautiful  women, 
for  most  of  the  Montevidean  ladies  have  a  beauty  that 
is  curiously  in  keeping  with  the  official  name  of  the 
Republic, —  oriental !  They  are  of  the  languorous, 
dark-eyed  type  —  beauty  that  has  a  touch  of  the  Jew- 
ish in  it  —  and  they  are  far  more  naturally  graceful 
than  the  ladies  of  Buenos  Ayres,  whom  they  make  no 


390  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

effort  to  imitate  in  the  matter  of  elaborate  dress,  their 
tastes  running  on  simpler  lines,  with  the  exception, 
perhaps,  of  a  notable  fondness  for  elaborate  coiffures. 
I  was  told  by  my  Spanish  lady  secretary,  who  had  lived 
for  some  years  in  Buenos  Ayres  before  coming  to 
Montevideo  (and  to  whom  I  owed  a  good  deal  of  my 
information  on  the  domestic  habits  of  the  people) ,  that 
those  charming  ladies  of  Montevideo  completely  out- 
did the  Argentines  in  the  matter  of  postizos,  as  many 
as  seven  or  eight  different  pieces  of  made-up  hair  be- 
ing added  to  their  natural  tresses.  The  sign  POSTIZOS 
(false  hair)  was  one  of  the  most  familiar  in  the  streets 
of  Montevideo,  where  coiffeurs  abound. 

Fresh  from  Buenos  Ayres,  it  was  particularly  pleas- 
ing to  us  to  observe  the  marked  respect  which  the 
women  of  Montevideo  received  from  the  male  popula- 
tion. Nothing  that  I  observed  during  my  wanderings 
about  South  America  seemed  to  me  to  present  a  greater 
contrast  in  manners  than  this.  Across  the  river,  a  few 
hours'  journey,  it  has  been  made  possible  for  women 
to  walk  about  the  streets  in  the  daylight  only  by  passing 
and  strictly  enforcing  an  Act  against  falto  de  respeto 
a  la  mujer.  Within  recent  years  this  instrument  has 
materially  improved  the  liberty  of  women  in  Buenos 
Ayres,  as  all  that  a  lady  has  to  do,  who  is  molested  in 
the  street  by  a  man,  is  to  call  a  policeman,  give  the  man 
in  charge,  and  walk  away.  The  molester  is  then 
marched  to  the  police  station,  fined  substantially,  and 
his  name  and  address  published  in  all  the  journals 
next  morning,  the  lady  suffering  no  further  incon- 
venience than  the  momentary  trouble  of  telling  the 
policeman  the  man  has  annoyed  her.  No  such  law 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO  391 

has  ever  been  necessary  in  Montevideo,  where  one  was 
reminded  of  home  by  noting  how  women  unaccom- 
panied, and  young  girls,  could  freely  go  about  the 
streets  at  all  hours  of  the  day,  even  until  midnight,  it 
being  not  uncommon  to  see  mothers  with  their  children 
sitting  in  the  plazas  enjoying  the  cool  sea-borne  breeze 
as  late  as  eleven  or  twelve  o'clock  at  night.  In  this 
alone  I  think  there  is  evidence  of  a  subtle  difference  of 
character  between  the  peoples  of  the  two  cities. 

We  do  not  see  the  same  bustling  crowds,  nothing 
remotely  suggestive  of  the  great  business  interests  at 
stake  across  the  river.  The  atmosphere  of  Monte- 
video is  essentially  that  of  leisure,  of  a  people  engaged 
liT^alfaTrs  that  do  not  imply  any  particular  hurry. 
"  Spanish  to-morrows  "  are  familiar  here  —  manana  is 
a  potent  word!  The  total  population  being  only  some 
four  hundred  thousand,  signifies  localism,  especially  as 
there  is  no  great  influx  of  foreign  immigration,  and 
most  people  of  any  position  in  the  town  know  every- 
body "  who  is  anybody."  I  have  read  in  "  authori- 
tative "  works  that  the  population  exists  in  a  continual 
state  of  vendetta  between  the  two  political  parties,  the 
Blancos  and  the  Colorados.  As  I  purpose  showing  in 
my  next  chapter,  politics  are  undoubtedly  the  great 
passion  of  the  Orientals,  but  nothing  could  be  more 
misleading  than  this  conception  of  bitter  enmity  be- 
tween ordinary  citizens  of  different  politics,  for  I  per- 
sonally became  acquainted  with  many  natives  of  the 
opposing  camps,  and  among  them  found  the  most  in- 
timate friends  who  differed  radically.  Two  of  the 
twelve  or  thirteen  daily  papers  published  in  the  city 
are  printed  in  the  same  offices  and  on  the  same  presses, 


392  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

though   they   represent   antagonistic   political   parties. 

The  whole  atmosphere  of  the  town  in  its  social  life 
was  to  me  infinitely  more  pleasing  than  that  of  Buenos 
Ayres.  It  is  a  friendly  town.  It  is  more  —  a  town 
of  homes.  The  ambition  of  the  Montevidean  is  to 
secure  a  comfortable  berth  in  the  Government  as 
quickly  as  he  can,  and  build  for  his  family  a  comfort- 
able home  in  which  he  will  take  a  genuine  pride  and 
where  a  real  home  feeling  will  exist.  There  are,  of 
course,  many  natives  engaged  in  flourishing  commer- 
cial enterprises,  and  these  are  probably  among  the 
wealthiest,  but  this  ambition  to  get  something  out  of 
the  Government  is  universal,  and  while  it  may  lead  to 
very  pleasant  conditions  of  life  for  the  successful  ones, 
it  is  extremely  bad  from  the  point  of  view  of  national 
progress.  That,  however,  is  a  subject  which  properly 
belongs  to  the  following  chapter.  Remains  the  fact 
that  there  is  an  air  of  comfort,  of  leisure,  and  of  life 
being  pleasantly  lived  in  Montevideo. 

The  city  itself,  far  more  than  Buenos  Ayres,  is  en- 
titled to  be  described  as  "  the  Paris  of  South  Amer- 
ica." From  the  ample  Plaza  Independencia,  the 
Avenida  18  de  Julio  extends  eastward  for  miles  in  a 
vista  essentially  Parisian.  Around  the  arcaded  plaza 
are  many  cafes,  with  their  chairs  and  tables  streaming 
over  the  wide  pavements,  while  along  the  avenida,  at 
the  beautiful  Plaza  Libertad  (or  Cagancha),  and  still 
farther  east,  following  the  course  of  this  splendid  av- 
enue, with  its  theatres  and  bright  little  cafes,  the  scene 
is  one  entirely  reminiscent  of  the  Paris  boulevards. 
There  is  also  an  air  of  substantiality  about  the  build- 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          393 

ings,  which  seldom  rise  higher  than  two  or  three 
stories,  and  more  often  are  content  with  one,  due,  I 
think,  to  a  larger  employment  of  stone,  though  the 
country  still  lacks  enterprise  to  make  the  fullest  use  of 
its  natural  riches  in  building-stone.  These  are  bound 
to  be  developed  in  due  time,  and  will  greatly  add  to  the 
endurance  of  its  cities. 

Some  day,  perhaps,  the  Plaza  Independencia  of 
Montevideo  will  be  one  of  the  finest  public  squares  in 
any  great  city.  I  have  seen  many  projected  designs 
for  its  reformation,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  every 
building  at  present  surrounding  it,  including  the  Gov- 
ernment House,  is  bound  to  disappear.  They  are  all 
unworthy  of  the  plaza,  and  must  some  day  make  way 
for  structures  of  greater  dignity  and  beauty.  The 
design  for  the  new  Government  House  is  so  ambitious 
in  comparison  with  the  common  little  stucco  erection 
which  at  present  very  inadequately  serves  that  purpose, 
that  I  doubt  if  it  is  ever  destined  to  be  realised  in  its 
entirety.  Builders  are  now  busy,  however,  on  the  new 
Legislative  Palace,  which  will  supersede  the  present 
little  building  in  the  Plaza  Matriz.  In  accordance  with 
the  modern  development  of  the  town  already  men- 
tioned, the  site  of  the  new  Palacio  Legislative  lies  away 
to  the  northeast  of  the  present  national  building,  a  dis- 
tance, I  should  judge,  of  nearly  two  miles.  Work  on 
this  magnificent  new  pile  was  progressing  steadily,  and 
before  long  I  expect  to  hear  of  its  inauguration.  With 
its  completion,  the  political  centre  will  change  entirely, 
and  a  new  importance  will  be  given  to  the  vicinity  of 
the  Legislative  Palace,  which  is  at  the  junction  of  the 


394  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

great  Avenidas  Agraciada  and  Sierra,  at  present  chiefly 
occupied  by  private  residences  and  small  dwellings  of 
the  colonial  type. 

The  Uruguayan  methods  of  dealing  with  these 
great  public  works  are  not  precisely  ours,  for  it  was 
originally  intended  to  erect  the  new  home  of  the 
Camaras  on  the  Avenida  18  de  Julio,  where  that  bi- 
furcates with  the  Avenida  Constituyente,  and  the  foun- 
dations of  the  great  building,  and  indeed  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  first  story,  were  erected.  Then  there 
was  a  change  of  opinion  —  the  imperious  President 
Batlle  was,  I  think,  responsible  for  that  —  and  the 
whole  work  was  stopped.  There  stand  to-day  these 
temporary  memorials  of  national  extravagance,  while 
the  new  building  is  being  erected  a  mile  away  to  the 
north.  Some  day  the  foundations  of  the  unfinished 
masonry  on  the  Avenida  18  de  Julio  are  to  be  taken 
away  and  the  site  laid  out  as  another  great  square,  to 
be  known  as  the  Plaza  de  Armas  —  a  warrior  race 
must  needs  have  its  Plaza  de  Armas ! 

Everywhere  one  is  impressed  by  the  energy.,  that  is 
going  to  the  beautifying  and  enlarging  of  the  city. 
The ["extensive  Boulevard  Artigas,  which  on  the  eastern 
extremity  runs  north  and  south  for  several  miles,  and 
to  the  north,  forming  a  right  angle  with  itself,  runs 
westward  nearly  to  the  bay,  in  its  present  half-finished 
state,  is  one  of  the  finest  thoroughfares  in  the  whole 
continent.  But  the  city  is  so  well  supplied  with  wide 
and  far-reaching  boulevards  that  its  population  is  not 
dense  enough  to  give  to  these  an  appearance  of  ani- 
mation, except  for  a  mile  or  so  to  the  east  of  the  Plaza 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          395 

Independencia,  and  seaward  for  some  little  distance 
beyond  the  Plaza  Constitucion. 

The  town  boasts  many  theatres  —  more  propor- 
tionately than  any  other  South  American  city  —  several 
of  these,  such  as  the  Soils,  the  Politeama,  and  the 
Urquiza  being  commodious  and  well  built.  The 
dramatic  instinct  is  pronounced  in  the  natives,  and  there 
is  quite  a  considerable  band  of  literary  enthusiasts  in 
Montevideo  working  to  create  a  body  of  national 
dramatic  literature  —  surely  a  remarkable  ambition 
for  a  nation,  whose  total  population  is  1,100,000  peo- 
ple !  The  late  Florencio  Sanchez  and  the  late  Samuel 
Blixen,  both  Montevidean  dramatists  of  distinction 
(the  former  died  at  an  early  age  a  few  years  ago  after 
winning  an  international  reputation) ,  were  two  of  the 
chief  forces  in  this  modern  movement  which  has  re- 
sulted in  so  keen  an  interest  in  the  drama  that  a  local 
publisher  has  been  able  to  issue  quite  a  long  series  of 
plays  written  by  Uruguayan  authors. 

Noteworthy  among  the  public  edifices  of  the  city 
are  the  handsome  buildings  of  the  University,  where 
the  faculties  of  medicine,  mathematics,  law,  and  com- 
merce are  all  splendidly  housed.  During  our  stay, 
a  further  extension  of  the  university  accommodation 
was  made  in  the  shape  of  a  plain,  modest,  two-story 
building, —  la  Universidad  de  Mujeres,  or  Women's 
University,  which  began  its  career  under  the  most 
promising  auspices.  Other  branches  of  public  educa- 
tion, such  as  the  fine  School  of  Agriculture,  splendidly 
equipped,  and  the  great  Veterinary  School,  where  the 
very  latest  appliances  of  veterinary  surgery  are  at  the 


396  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

disposal  of  the  students,  would  be  worthy  of  detailed 
description,  did  the  limits  of  my  space  permit.  The 
Uruguayans  are  enthusiasts  for  public  education,  and 
relatively  to  the  Argentines  stand  much  as  the  Scots  to 
the  English.  Ohe  might  write  at  great  length  of  the 
excellent  educational  facilities  that  exist  in  Monte- 
video, but  perhaps  the  best  proof  of  their  efficiency  is 
the  fact  that  we  find  so  many  Uruguayans  occupying 
positions  of  importance  in  the  Argentine,  especially 
among  the  learned  professions.  Uruguayans  swarm 
in  Argentine  journalism,  just  as  Scots  in  that  of  Eng- 
land. These  beautiful  buildings  of  the  University, 
and  that  devoted  to  the  Faculty  of  Secondary  Educa- 
tion (Facultad  de  Ensenanza  Secundaria)  are  no  mere 
vanities,  but  centres  of  most  active  educational  life. 

There  is  little  to  interest  us  in  the  churches  of  the 
town,  though  the  Cathedral,  with  its  ever-open  door, 
and  the  absence  of  that  tawdriness  which  one  is  apt  to 
associate  with  the  material  evidences  of  religion  in 
South  America,  always  seemed  to  me  in  harmony  with 
the  sane  and  orderly  character  of  the  city.  The  Eng- 
lish Church,  which  stands  on  a  rocky  eminence  at  the 
south  end  of  the  Calle  Treinta  y  Tres,  with  the  waves 
of  the  estuary  splashing  at  its  base,  is  probably  as  his- 
torical as  any  other  in  the  city.  For  more  than  half 
a  century  it  has  existed  much  as  it  is  to-day,  a  neat  lit- 
tle building  of  the  basilica  type  —  which  in  Roman 
Catholic  countries  usually  distinguishes  Protestant 
churches  from  Roman  Catholic.  In  the  course  of  that 
time,  however,  the  character  of  the  surrounding  neigh- 
bourhood has  greatly  changed,  and  it  is  now  the  lowest 
quarter  of  the  town,  chiefly  occupied  by  licensed  broth- 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          397 

els  and  the  low  resorts  of  the  mariners  whom  the 
winds  of  chance  blow  into  the  port  of  Montevideo. 
In  the  same  locality  I  found  the  old  British  Hospital, 
an  establishment  entirely  inadequate  for  its  purposes, 
but  then  in  the  last  days  of  its  long  existence,  as  a  com- 
modious new  hospital  was  being  built  on  the  Boulevard 
Artigas,  and,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  was  inaugurated 
before  we  left. 

Near  to  the  latter,  another  fine  new  hospital  had 
just  been  erected  by  the  Italian  community.  This  oc- 
cupies a  very  extensive  site,  the  buildings  exceeding 
those  of  the  British  Hospital  by  several  times,  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  large  Italian  Colony.  But  in  the  care  of 
the  sick  the  city  as  a  whole  is  well  provided,  the  great 
Hospital  de  Caridad,  which  occupies  an  entire  square  in 
the  Calle  Maciel,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  poorer  dis- 
tricts whence  come  most  of  the  patients,  being  largely 
supported  from  the  proceeds  of  the  frequent  public 
lotteries  held  on  its  behalf.  There  is  also  a  service  of 
Asistencia  Publica,  organised  on  the  same  method  as 
that  which  plays  so  notable  a  part  in  the  life  of  Buenos 
Ayres. 

Scattered  among  the  different  public  buildings,  the 
city  possesses  a  few  paintings  of  historic  value,  but,  on 
the  whole,  it  may  be  said  to  be  destitute  of  art  treas- 
ures, while  the  little  museum  that  occupies  a  wing  of 
the  Solis  Theatre  is  scarcely  worthy  of  even  a  little 
nation.  The  National  Library  and  various  other  li- 
braries associated  with  the  different  faculties  of  the 
University,  and  that  of  the  Camaras,  as  well  as  the 
excellent  institution  known  as  the  Ateneo,  which  oc- 
cupies an  attractive  building  in  the  Plaza  Libertad,  are 


398  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

all  evidences  of  the  remarkable  literary  culture  of  the 
Republic,  probably  superior  to  that  of  any  other  mod- 
ern people  so  small  in  numbers;  but  of  sculpture  and 
the  graphic  arts  there  is  very  little  indeed  to  be  dis- 
covered in  the  city.  Perhaps,  after  all,  these  are 
more  often  evidences  of  commercial  prosperity,  for  art 
flourishes  best  where  there  is  ample  money  to  purchase 
its  products.  And  for  reasons  which  I  shall  endeav- 
our to  explain  in  my  next  chapter,  the  time  of  commer- 
cial expansion  and  the  enrichment  of  the  people  in  Uru- 
guay is  not  yet. 

This  the  observer  will  also  note  by  contrasting  the 
private  residences  of  the  wealthier  classes  with  those 
of  the  Argentine.  Montevideo  contains  many  beauti- 
ful homes,  but  few  of  those  grandiose  palaces  which 
are  so  familiar  a  feature  of  Buenos  Ayres.  At  the 
bathing  suburb  of  Pocitos,  and  on  the  road  thither, 
especially  along  the  Avenida  Brasil,  many  charming 
qumtas  are  to  be  seen,  but  most  of  them  are  of  modest 
size  and  quite  unpretentious,  although  occasionally 
some  successful  Italian  has  had  his  suburban  villa  dec- 
orated in  the  loud  style  of  an  ice-cream  saloon  exterior 
with  elaborate  iron-work  railings  and  balconies  de- 
signed in  the  most  debased  style  of  the  art  nouveau, 
and  painted  a  vivid  blue.  The  house  of  the  late  Pres- 
ident Williman  at  Pocitos  is  merely  a  pretty  little 
suburban  villa,  with  no  undue  ostentation;  in  fine,  one 
discovers  in  the  domestic  architecture  of  Montevideo 
something  of  that  essentially  democratic  spirit  which 
informs  the  character  of  the  people. 

In  the  older  part  of  the  town,  the  pleasant  old  cus- 
tom, which  used  to  be  universal  throughout  Europe, 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          399 

of  the  merchant  or  tradesman  residing  on  the  premises 
where  he  plied  his  business,  still  lingers.  The  success- 
ful lawyer  lives  right  in  the  heart  of  the  business  dis- 
trict, and  has  his  office  in  his  house.  So,  too,  the 
doctor,  while  the  printer,  bookseller,  and  the  importer 
often  have  their  private  residences  on  the  floors  above 
their  business  premises.  One  of  the  wealthiest  fam- 
ilies of  bankers  thus  live  over  their  bank,  not  far  from 
the  docks,  in  a  street  so  noisy  that  the  unceasing  rattle 
of  its  traffic  still  sounds  disturbing  in  my  memory  of 
the  busy  days  I  spent  there.  But  this  old  custom  is 
rapidly  giving  way  before  the  'attractions  of  the  beau- 
tiful suburbs  that  have  opened  up  along  the  sandy 
shores  of  Pocitos  and  inland  as  far  as  the  charming 
little  town  of  Villa  Colon,  with  its  great  avenues  of 
trees,  its  rippling  streams,  and  leafy,  undulating  land- 
scapes. 

There  are  strange  tastes  to  be  noted,  for  one  of  the 
most  imposing  private  residences  in  the  city,  indeed  the 
most  remarkable  of  all,  worthy  to  be  used  as  the 
Government  House,  has  been  built  within  recent  years 
by  a  successful  Italian  in  the  Plaza  Zabala,  almost 
within  hail  of  the  docks,  and  in  the  very  centre  of  that 
fan  handle  which  I  have  already  described  as  the  turn- 
ing point  of  the  multitudinous  trams.  The  frequent 
visitors  who  leave  their  ships  for  a  short  ramble  round 
the  town  are  always  arrested  by  the  imposing  appear- 
ance of  this  building,  and  often  little  groups  of  them 
are  to  be  seen  discussing  what  it  may  be.  Never  by 
any  chance  did  I  notice  visitors  pausing  before  the 
plain  little  colonial  residence  a  few  paces  westward  in 
the  same  street,  where  a  tablet  records  the  interesting 


400  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

fact  that  it  was  the  lodging  of  the  great  Garibaldi 
when,  during  the  final  struggle  between  Rivera  and 
Oribe  (1843-1851),  the  hero  of  Italy  for  a  time  com- 
manded the  Brazilian  regiment,  which,  with  the  Ital- 
ian and  French  legions,  defended  Montevideo  against 
the  leader  of  the  Blancos. 

So  far  as  fresh  air  is  concerned,  there  is  certainly  no 
reason  for  preferring  one  part  of  Montevideo  over 
another,  as  the  whole  town  is  so  accessible  to  the  sea 
breezes  that  even  in  the  height  of  summer,  when  the 
population  of  Buenos  Ayres  is  gasping  for  breath, 
there  is  always  fresh  air  in  Montevideo  —  infinitely 
more  than  the  Argentine  capital  is  it  the  city  of  buenos 
aires  (good  airs).  As  for  paseos,  there  is  no  lack. 
Many  a  pleasant  evening  did  we  lonely  Gringos 
pass  at  one  or  other  of  the  playas,  as  the  wa- 
terside resorts  are  termed.  Thanks  to  a  public  com- 
mission, which  takes  in  hand  the  organisation  of  the 
summer  fetes,  there  is  always  something  going  on  at 
one  or  other  of  these  resorts,  and  half  an  hour  in  the 
tramway  suffices  to  transport  one  to  Remirez,  Pocitos, 
or  Capurro,  as  the  occasion  serves.  Each  has  its  re- 
spective noches  de  moda,  when  the  promenade  pier  is 
illuminated  with  the  usual  prodigality  of  electricity, 
and  a  band  plays  for  some  hours,  during  which  the 
paseantes  wander  up  and  down  to  the  strains  of  the 
music,  and  after  the  last  number  has  been  played, 
hasten  to  the  homeward  trams  —  the  mildest  and  most 
innocent  form  of  pleasure  imaginable,  and  entirely  at 
variance  with  European  notions  of  South  American 
life. 

Of  Pocitos,  I  retain  the  most  agreeable  memories, 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          401 

for  many  was  the  night  we  lingered  on  its  gaily  lighted 
pier,  listening  to  the  band,  watching  the  throng  of 
idlers,  or  "  looking  lazy  at  the  sea,"  where  the  light- 
house on  the  Isla  de  Lobos  (the  island  of  sea-lions, 
where  many  thousands  of  these  animals  are  killed 
every  year  for  the  oil  they  yield,  and  for  their  skins) 
was  throwing  its  beams  across  the  dark  waters  of  the 
estuary  —  a  signal  post  to  the  broad  Atlantic  and  to 
Home!  The  water  front  at  Pocitos  has  been  turned 
into  a  splendid  promenade,  comparable  almost  with  the 
Marina  at  Rio  de  Janeiro,  and  among  the  little  rocky 
prominences  are  many  charming  glimpses  to  remind 
the  exile  of  the  shores  of  his  homeland. 

Often  we  rambled,  too,  on  foot  along  the  coast  to 
Ramirez,  over  fields  and  rocks  and  patches  of  sandy 
shore,  catching  sight  at  times  of  the  big  ocean  liners 
slowly  creeping  up  the  river  on  their  way  to  the  great 
city  of  the  southern  shore. 

Ramirez  is  not  so  fashionable  as  Pocitos,  being 
rather  the  resort  of  the  multitude.  At  the  latter 
playa  during  the  season,  when  the  fine  hotel  is  thronged 
with  visitors,  one  may  see  the  latest  Parisian  modes, 
exhibited  chiefly  by  Argentine  lady  visitors,  who  are 
nearly  always  distinguishable  from  the  quieter  and 
slimmer  belles  of  Montevideo,  but  at  Ramirez  we  have 
a  miniature  Blackpool,  with  open-air  theatres,  merry- 
go-rounds,  shooting  galleries,  and  such-like  diversions 
of  the  mob.  Here,  too,  is  the  fine  Parque  Urbano, 
beautifully  laid  out  on  bosky,  undulating  ground,  with 
devious  little  waterways,  where  pleasure  boats,  shaped 
like  swans,  ply  for  hire.  Hard  by  the  pier,  stands  the 
great  Parque  Hotel  where  the  chief  attractions  are  the 


402  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

gambling  tables,  mainly  patronised  by  wealthy  Argen- 
tines. 

At  both  places  there  is  bathing  throughout  the  sum- 
mer, after  the  water  has  been  duly  blessed  by  the 
Bishop,  on  (I  think)  the  eighth  of  December  —  for 
the  native  does  not  venture  to  dip  himself  until  that 
ceremony  has  been  performed.  Long  rows  of  bath- 
ing boxes  line  the  beach  at  Pocitos,  but  the  local  au- 
thorities are  curiously  indifferent  to  the  interests  of  the 
bathers  in  choosing  a  little  promontory  about  half  a 
mile  from  the  pier  for  burning  the  refuse  of  the  city 
and  throwing  it  into  the  water,  so  that  the  whole  of  the 
little  cove  shows  along  high  water  mark  a  thick  line  of 
dirt  washed  up  after  the  ill-advised  sanitary  efforts  at 
the  point!  It  is  thus  customary  for  the  bathers,  on 
emerging  from  the  salty  waves,  to  wash  themselves 
from  pails  of  clean  water,  in  order  to  remove  the 
traces  of  burnt  refuse  from  their  bodies.  This  is  a 
little  touch  that  is  quaintly  South  American. 

Capurro,  the  third  of  the  suburban  resorts,  is  pret- 
tily situated  on  the  bay,  about  midway  between  the  city 
and  the  Cerro.  It  serves  the  western  part  of  the  city, 
which  stretches  out  along  the  bay,  and  did  not  seem  to 
be  much  frequented  by  the  summer  visitors,  though  on 
a  noche  de  moda  we  used  to  see  its  numerous  electric 
lights  blazing  like  a  little  constellation  as  we  looked 
westward  from  our  windows  in  the  plaza. 

Finest  of  all  the  paseos  is  the  Prado.  This  splendid 
public  park  lies  in  the  same  direction  as  Capurro,  and 
through  its  undulating  grounds  runs  the  little  river 
Miguelete.  It  is  the  pride  of  the  Montevideans,  and 
fully  merits  the  charming  adjectives  they  apply  to  it, 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          403 

for  It  abounds  in  fine  avenues  of  century-old  trees,  and 
winding  walks  among  rich  and  varied  vegetation,  while 
its  rosarium  is  very  extensive  and  contains  an  infinite 
variety  of  roses.  Well  kept,  provided  with  a  good 
restaurant,  and  seats  for  the  weary,  with  boating  on 
the  Miguelete  among  the  swans,  the  Prado  is  certainly 
a  great  possession  for  any  town,  and  will  compare  with 
most  North  American  or  European  resorts  of  the  kind. 
It  is  favoured  by  the  residents  more  than  by  the  visit- 
ors, and  on  Sundays  is  the  scene  of  innumerable  picnic 
parties. 

Nor  must  I  forget,  in  recalling  the  scenes  among 
which  we  spent  our  summer  at  Montevideo,  the  curious 
little  Zoo  at  Villa  Dolores,  some  little  distance  from 
Pocitos.  Here  again,  we  encounter  one  of  the  many 
evidences  of  difference  in  the  Uruguayan  and  Argen- 
tine characters.  This  institution,  originally  a  portion 
of  a  large  private  estate,  and  established  entirely  as  a 
private  collection  by  the  owner,  has  recently  been  made 
over  to  the  Government,  who  are  continuing  its  main- 
tenance in  a  praiseworthy  manner.  It  is  the  outcome, 
not  merely  of  the  educational  side  of  zoology,  by 
which  I  mean  the  illustrating  of  animal  life  by  living 
specimens,  but  of  a  desire  to  promote  a  friendly  inter- 
est in  the  animals.  Among  the  many  curiosities  it  con- 
tains is  a  little  cemetery,  with  monuments  to  departed 
pets.  Some  of  these  are  quite  elaborate  affairs,  with 
inscriptions  full  of  nai've  tenderness,  though  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  suppress  a  smile  at  a  memorial  to  a  pet  serpent ! 
Dogs,  cats,  monkeys,  donkeys,  parrots,  and  I  think 
even  a  lion  are  among  the  departed  whose  memories 
are  here  preserved. 


4o4  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

The  collection  of  wild  animals  is  not  so  large  as 
that  at  Buenos  Ayres,  but  their  houses  are  of  the  clean- 
est and  most  varied  character,  imitating  in  cement  all 
sorts  of  quaint  dwellings,  such  as  caves,  kraals,  bee- 
hives, and  the  most  fanciful  structures  in  which  animals 
ever  were  housed.  Great  artificial  grottoes  and 
craggy  peaks  of  cement  decorate  the  grounds,  while 
the  water-fowls  have  all  manner  of  queer  little  islands, 
with  strange  figures  of  gnomes  dotted  about  them,  in 
the  lakelets  and  canals.  The  whole  place  is  inspired 
with  the  feeling  of  kindness  to  animals,  but  I  was  never 
quite  able  to  understand  why  it  contained  such  large 
numbers  of  valuable  dogs  penned  up  in  great  airy 
cages,  unless  they  were  for  sale.  One  of  the  apes  was 
so  well  trained,  that  he  used  to  wander  about  the 
grounds  free  from  his  keeper  and  make  friends  with 
visitors,  often  to  their  discomfiture.  On  holidays  he 
would  go  a-cycling,  to  the  delight  of  the  children,  and 
was  an  expert  oh  roller  skates,  being  in  every  sense  as 
clever  and  intelligent  as  the  famous  Max  and  Moritz. 
The  admission  to  this  most  interesting  public  exhibi- 
tion is  only  a  few  pence,  and  its  refining  influence  on  the 
public  cannot  be  overestimated. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  rough  and  haphazard 
sketch  of  the  attractions  of  Montevideo  that  we  two 
Gringos  had  good  reason  to  congratulate  ourselves  on 
being  able  to  spend  our  summer  there,  rather  than  in 
Buenos  Ayres.  I  am  free  to  confess,  however,  that 
during  the  period  of  Carnival,  which  lasted  for  the 
greater  part  of  February,  there  were  times  when  we 
were  inclined  to  think  that  we  had  almost  too  much  of 
a  good  tiling.  All  those  pleasure  resorts  figure  more 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO          405 

or  less  prominently  in  the  long  list  of  festivities  ar- 
ranged by  the  Carnival  Committee,  and  the  town  itself 
becomes  one  vast  exhibition  of  illuminations.  The 
three  principal  plazas  are  decorated  with  the  most 
elaborate  designs  in  arches  of  electric  lamps.  The 
avenida  is  festooned  from  side  to  side,  and  all  the  way 
from  the  Plaza  Libertad  to  the  Plaza  Independencia, 
with  lamps  innumerable,  while  Venetian  masts,  carry- 
ing huge  comic  faces  that  are  illumined  by  night,  line 
the  pavements. 

The  Carnival  proper,  with  its  processions  of  deco- 
rated coaches  and  symbolical  cars,  its  battles  of  flowers, 
and  its  comparsas,  or  companies  of  masqueraders,  lasts 
only  throughout  the  first  week  of  February,  but  for  a 
fortnight  or  more  in  advance  and  for  a  good  fortnight 
afterwards,  every  boy  in  the  town  possesses  himself  of 
a  tin  can  and  a  stick,  and  as  single  spies  or  in  battal- 
ions, they  make  night  hideous.  A  passion  for  causing 
a  noise  by  any  means  seems  to  seize  the  lower  orders, 
and  the  whole  month  of  February  is  practically  wasted 
so  far  as  business  and  serious  affairs  are  concerned. 
The  newspapers  teem  with  announcements  from  the 
secretaries  of  the  different  clubs  that  have  been  organ- 
ised to  take  part  in  the  competition  of  the  comparsas, 
as  prizes  are  offered  for  the  company  making  the 
bravest  show  as  courtiers  of  Louis  XIV,  mounted 
gauchos,  warriors  of  the  Cannibal  islands,  or  whatever 
guise  they  may  determine  upon.  Albanians,  Monte- 
negrins, Rumanians,  and  other  foreign  residents  who 
boast  a  picturesque  national  costume,  don  it  for  the 
Carnival;  girls  of  the  populace,  dress  up  as  boys,  and 
boys  as  girls;  false  faces  of  every  conceivable  kind  are 


4o6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

worn  by  merry-makers,  who,  so  disguised,  may 
"  chivy  "  the  staider  passers-by  to  their  hearts'  content. 
There  are  great  masque  balls  in  the  Solis  Theatre, 
balls  for  children,  and  dances  innumerable  in  private 
houses,  into  which  masqueraders  often  enter  and  take 
part  in  the  fun  uninvited  and  unknown. 

The  real  old  spirit  of  Carnival  is  abroad,  and  the 
whole  thing  is  conducted  with  so  much  good  taste  and 
with  so  little  rowdyism  that  it  is  easy  to  see  why  it 
attracts  such  large  numbers  from  Buenos  Ayres,  where 
the  low  class  element  so  abused  the  liberties  of  Carnival 
in  past  years  that  it  was  prohibited,  and  is  observed 
only  to  a  small  extent  in  some  of  the  suburbs.  The 
use  of  paper  confetti  and  serpentinas,  of  which  tons 
must  be  sold  during  the  festivities,  litters  the  streets 
and  festoons  lamp-posts,  telephone  wires,  and  window 
railings  with  streamers  which,  in  the  less  accessible 
places,  hang  for  months  afterwards  as  mournful  re- 
minders of  the  merry  time  that  was;  but  the  municipal 
authorities  show  a  remarkable  celerity  in  clearing 
away  all  their  temporary  provisions  for  the  festivities. 
By  the  beginning  of  March,  Montevideo  was  its  own 
staid  self  again,  and  by  the  end  of  that  month  the  short 
holiday  season  had  utterly  passed,  the  bands  at  the 
playas  had  played  their  last  tunes,  the  Hotel  Pocitos 
and  the  Parque  Hotel  had  closed  their  doors,  no  gaily- 
dressed  throngs  were  to  be  seen  on  the  promenades, 
and  people  were  beginning  to  think  of  their  social  en- 
gagements for  the  coming  winter;  for  it  is  in  the 
autumn  and  winter  season  that  the  Montevideans  them- 
selves enjoy  most  their  social  round,  when  their  the- 
atres are  occupied  by  numerous  dramatic  and  operatic 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO  407 

companies  from  Italy,  Spain,  and  France,  when  politi- 
cal enthusiasts  harangue  their  audiences,  and  lecturers 
give  their  conferencias  on  literary  and  scientific  sub- 
jects. 

On  the  whole,  you  will  see  we  had  not  so  bad  a  time 
in  the  capital  of  Uruguay.  Memories  of  our  pleasant 
days  and  nights  there  crowd  so  thickly  on  me  as  I 
write  that  it  is  difficult  to  set  them  down,  and  I  feel 
that  the  most  I  can  do  is  to  touch  in  the  briefest  way 
upon  those  that  come  uppermost,  leaving  it  to  the 
reader  to  imagine  how  our  time  was  passed.  We 
never  seemed  to  tire  of  wandering  the  streets,  as  the 
avenida  and  the  two  central  plazas  retained  an  air  of 
brightness  and  friendliness  to  a  late  hour,  and  often  a 
military  band  would  be  playing  between  nine  and 
eleven  o'clock  at  night.  Until  a  late  hour,  the  town 
never  assumed  the  extraordinary  nightly  dulness  of 
Buenos  Ayres,  and  very  pleasant  it  was,  night  after 
night,  to  see  the  little  family  groups  meet  and  gossip 
with  the  familiarity  of  a  village.  The  Bohemian  ele- 
ment, represented  here,  as  elsewhere,  by  wide-awake 
hats  and  pendulous  locks,  had  its  habitat  at  the  Cafe 
Giralda,  at  the  corner  of  the  Plaza  Independencia, 
where  most  evenings  the  local  poets  —  it  rivals  Pais- 
ley as  a  nest  of  singing  birds  —  journalists,  and  "  com- 
ing men  "  in  politics,  looked  in  for  a  coffee  and  a  chat. 

Surely  there  never  was  such  a  town  for  journalists. 
I  believe  you  could  not  throw  a  stone  down  any  street 
without  hitting  a  journalist.  An  American  city  of  the 
same  size  would  probably  possess  not  more  than  five 
or  six  daily  newspapers;  Montevideo  has  a  dozen  or 
more !  Many  of  the  journalists  do  not  limit  their  ac- 


408  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

tivities  to  that  profession,  but  are  also  engaged  as  law- 
yers, accountants,  and  in  other  businesses,  as  it  is  very 
common  to  combine  several  occupations;  the  ware- 
house clerk  may  possibly  play  in  an  orchestra  in  the 
evenings,  and  make  up  some  tradesman's  accounts  on 
the  Sundays.  Which  reminds  me  that  every  place  of 
business  is  closed  on  Sunday,  only  the  restaurants, 
cafes,  and  theatres  being  open. 

The  shops,  of  course,  do  not  compare  favourably 
with  those  of  the  great  metropolis  further  up  the  river, 
for  there  is  not  the  wealth  in  the  country  to  justify 
anything  approaching  the  luxury  and  plenitude  of  the 
Buenos  Ayres  shopping  marts.  The  largest  establish- 
ment of  the  drapery  kind  is  owned  by  an  English  firm, 
and  there  are  several  fine  warehouses  run  by  French 
and  Italian  firms,  as  well  as  some  of  considerable  size 
under  native  proprietorship.  But  for  the  most  part, 
the  shops,  among  which  jewellers'  abound,  have  a  pro- 
vincial rather  than  a  metropolitan  touch,  though  the 
newer  establishments  along  the  Avenida  18  de  Julio 
are  coming  into  line  with  the  most  modern  ideas  of 
shopkeeping.  The  habit  of  the  tradesman  living  on 
his  premises  is  probably  one  of  the  reasons  why  the 
early  closing,  so  remarkable  in  Buenos  Ayres,  is  not 
observed  in  Montevideo,  to  the  consequent  brightness 
of  the  streets.  I  remember  how  we  used  to  be  misled 
in  our  window  gazing  by  the  prices  of  the  wares,  soon 
after  our  arrival,  as  everything  appeared  so  much 
cheaper  than  in  Buenos  Ayres,  until  we  had  become 
accustomed  to  the  fact  that  the  Uruguayan  peso  is 
worth  exactly  62  cts.  more  than  the  Argentine,  being 
equal  to  $1.02  United  States  money.  Then  we  dis- 


OUR  SUMMER  IN  MONTEVIDEO  409 

covered  that  most  things  were  somewhat  more  expen- 
sive! 

While  we  suffered  from  no  lack  of  noise,  as  the 
reader  will  have  discovered,  during  our  stay,  I  do  not 
remember  ever  to  have  heard  the  whistle  of  a  railway 
train.  Trains  come  and  go  at  the  station  of  the  Cen- 
tral Railway,  which  is  some  considerable  distance  from 
the  older  part  of  the  city,  but  although  our  wanderings 
took  us  several  times  to  that  model  of  a  railway  sta- 
tion, we  never  even  heard  the  hiss  of  steam,  nor  saw 
any  sign  of  life  therein.  It  possesses  an  excellent 
restaurant,  and  its  exterior  is  decorated  with  large 
stucco  statues  of  George  Stephenson  and  James  Watt 
and  two  foreign  celebrities  whose  names  have  escaped 
my  memory,  but  as  railways  are  still  in  their  infancy  in 
Uruguay,  and  trains  go  only  every  second  day  to  the 
principal  provincial  cities,  and  not  always  so  fre- 
quently as  that,  it  will  be  understood  why  the  Mon- 
tevideo station  is  more  often  as  quiet  as  a  museum  than 
animated  as  a  railway  terminus.  It  is  quicker,  for  in- 
stance, to  reach  Paysandu,  the  important  commercial 
city  of  the  northwestern  Uruguayan  province  of  that 
name,  by  taking  the  boat  to  Buenos  Ayres  and  thence 
by  train  and  boat,  than  by  travelling  all  the  way  on 
Uruguayan  railways. 

This  lack  of  speedy  train  service  prevented  me  from 
becoming  acquainted  with  the  provinces  of  Uruguay, 
as  none  of  my  plains  could  accommodate  themselves 
to  the  leisurely  methods  of  travel,  and  so  my  excur- 
sions were  confined  to  the  immediate  surroundings  of 
the  city.  My  favourite  outing  was  a  trip  across  the 
bay  in  a  little  steam  launch,  which  in  less  than  twenty 


4io  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

minutes   landed  me   on  the   rickety  old  wooden  pier 
-  near  the  Villa  de  Cerro  and  thence  a  long  exhilarating 
ramble  uphill  took  me  to  the  old  Spanish  fortress  on 
the  top  of  the  Cerro,  still  used  as  a  fortification  by  the 
Uruguayans.     From  the  walls  of  this,  splendid  pros- 
pects seaward  and  landward  may  be  had,  while  the 
fortress  itself  —  with  its  rather  slatternly  garrison,  the 
officer  on  duty  looking  heroically  seaward  while  he  sips 
his  mate,   and  the  horses  cropping  the  grass  on  the 
slopes  below  —  is  by  no  means  uninteresting.     What 
pleased  me  most  was  to  look  landward  over  the  rolling 
plains,  grassy  and  undulating,  as  far  as  eye  could  reach, 
and  at  no  great  distance  from  the  fort,  alive  with  herds 
of  cattle  on  the  part  known  as  la  Tablada,  so  impor- 
tant to  the  life  and  prosperity  of  Montevideo.     For  in 
these  herds,  brought  here  chiefly  to  be  converted  into 
extract  of  meat  for  a  great  English  firm,  is  the  princi- 
pal wealth  of  the  country,  and  its  history  that  is  not 
concerned  with  wars  and  revolutions  is  bound  up  with 
the  herding  of  cattle.     Such  as  we  see  the  country 
from  the  Cerro,  it  is,  I  am  told,  throughout  its  length 
and  breadth  —  a  land  of  ideal  pasturage,  full  of  gen- 
tle valleys,  and  with  no  hill  that  rises  more  than  2,000 
feet  above  sea  level.     A  pleasant  land,  with  endless 
possibilities  for  the  agriculturist.     Yes,  all  my  memo- 
ries of  Montevideo  seem  to  be  agreeable,  for  even  its 
cemetery,  beautifully  situated  on  high  ground  by  the 
sea,  was  in  keeping  with  the  general  impression  and 
had  an  air  of  peacefulness  and  rest  which  Recoleta  so 
much  lacked. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

URUGUAY:  SOME  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS 

LITTLE  countries,  like  little  people,  have  a  knack  of 
making  themselves  interesting.  The  simile  might  be 
further  pursued  —  especially  among  the  Republics  of 
South  America  —  in  that  the  smaller  they  are,  the 
more  noisy  and  obstreperous  shall  we  find  their  his- 
tories have  been.  But  there  is  a  certain  dignity  and 
much  to  admire  in  the  little  Republic  of  Uruguay,  and 
its  country  is  one  of  the  most  attractive. 

After  the  impression  of  vastness  left  on  the  wan- 
derer in  the  Argentine,  Uruguay  seemed  a  very  small 
affair  indeed;  no  more  than  an  Argentine  province. 
It  was  a  corrective  to  this  impression  of  littleness  and 
consequent  impotence  to  remember  that  even  little 
Uruguay  was  larger  than  England  and  Wales,  and 
not  so  much  smaller  than  the  whole  of  Great  Britain. 
It  covers  72,210  square  miles,  against  the  88,729  of 
Great  Britain.  We  know,  however,  that  mere  area 
does  not  matter  greatly  in  national  importance,  com- 
pared with  population,  and  the  total  population  of 
Uruguay  is  only  two-thirds  that  of  the  city  of  Phila- 
delphia. 

It  may  be  a  small  country  and  a  smaller  people,  but 
the  spirit  of  great  things  flames  in  the  breast  of  Uru- 
guay. Here  is  how  one  of  its  authors,  Senor  Am- 
brosio  L.  Ramasso,  in  his  well-known  work  El  Es- 
tadista,  begins  his  chapter  on  the  warrior  spirit  of  his 
race: 

4x1 


412  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

The  production  of  the  soil,  exuberant ;  flesh  food  for  nourish- 
ment, in  abundance;  a  frugal  people,  sustaining  themselves 
chiefly  upon  beef,  flour,  and  mate;  the  land  undulating  and 
extremely  fertile,  the  climate  without  excessive  rigours,  and 
the  need  for  clothing  moderate;  the  horse  always  at  hand; 
hospitality  unlimited,  and  the  host  who  gives  it  generous; 
nature  luxuriant,  beautiful,  full  of  tones  and  superb  changes, 
inviting  to  admiration,  and  the  enjoyment  of  that  drowsiness 
and  indolence  which  the  benignity  of  the  climate  carries  with 
it;  the  lack  of  the  habit  of  work,  due  to  the  facility  with 
which  the  physical  necessities  may  be  satisfied;  the  war  that 
continues  with  the  animals;  all  these  factors  had  two  decisive 
results  in  the  making  of  the  child  of  this  country.  On  the 
one  hand,  they  made  him  full  of  passion,  with  no  manner  of 
brake  thereon;  and  on  the  other,  they  did  not  suppress  the 
fighting  instincts  of  his  ancestors,  but  rather  encouraged  their 
growth. .  His  chief  tendency  had  to  be  inevitably  towards  war, 
either  as  the  outcome  of  his  natural  heritage,  or  as  an  escape 
valve  for  activities  not  otherwise  employed,  or  yet  again  by 
giving  expansion  to  that  passionate  and  vehement  nature  of 
the  Latin  race  in  a  climate  where  vitality  is  such  that  all  things 
tend  to  expand  and  overflow.  A  further  condition  which 
favoured  the  bellicose  tendency  in  the  Uruguayan  was  his  ex- 
cessive power  of  imagination;  a  faculty  which  then,  as  now, 
he  had  in  richest  measure.  .  .  . 

And  in  this  manner  Sefior  R'amasso  goes  on  for  sev- 
eral pages,  showing  how  nature  had  marked  out  the 
Uruguayan  for  a  warrior  and  fighting  as  the  master 
passion  of  his  life.  The  history  of  the  country  is  cer- 
tainly sufficient  proof  of  this  spirit,  and  it  still  exists 
in  high  degree,  though  it  would  seem  that  the  bad  old 
days  of  the  sword  and  the  gun  have  now  given  place 
to  an  era  of  political  strife,  in  which  the  tongue  and  the 
pen  are  the  more  favoured  weapons. 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS      413 

Uruguay  retains,  in  Europe,  at  least,  an  unenviable 
reputation  as  a  hotbed  of  revolutions,  and  I  am  far 
from  supposing  that  we  have  seen  the  last  of  these. 
But  forces  are  at  work  which  will  make  the  upheavals 
of  the  future  more  decorous  than  those  of  the  past. 
During  our  summer  in  Montevideo,  all  the  elements  of 
a  first-class  revolution  were  in  existence,  but  they  spent 
themselves  in  a  wordy  warfare  among  the  newspapers, 
in  public  demonstrations  and  counter  demonstrations; 
not  a  shot  was  fired,  though  the  President's  suburban 
retreat  at  Piedras  Blancas,  a  few  miles  from  the  city, 
was  continually  under  strong  military  guard. 

'  You  will  still  hear  much  talk  of  revolution  among 
our  young  men  at  the  cafes,"  said  Uruguay's  most  fa- 
mous philosopher  and  litterateur  to  me  on  one  of  the 
many  occasions  when  we  discussed  the  entertaining 
politics  of  his  country.  "  That  is  one  of  their  amuse- 
ments, and  will  continue  to  be  so  for  some  time  yet,  but 
every  new  batch  of  emigrants  that  lands  in  the  port  of 
Montevideo  helps  to  banish  further  the  revolutionary 
era,  and  if  we  could  but  divert  some  portion  of  the 
great  stream  of  emigration  that  rolls  past  our  shores 
each  year  into  the  Argentine,  nothing  would  be  more 
effective  in  producing  a  peaceful  and  prosperous 
Uruguay." 

These  were  the  words  of  Senor  Jose  Enrique 
Rodo —  el  gran  Rodo,  as  he  is  affectionately  termed 
throughout  Latin-America  —  and  therein  we  have  the 
explanation  of  the  bellicose  history  of  this  charming 
little  country.  Uruguay  was  left  too  much  to  itself,  its 
people  so  long  content  to  let  the  natural  fruitfulness 
of  their  land  supply  their  simple  needs,  that  the  only 


4H  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

outlet  for  their  energies  was  to  quarrel  among  them- 
selves, and  thus  grew  up  the  two  political  camps,  the 
Blancos  and  the  Colorados,  concerning  which  I  do  not 
recall  any  approximately  accurate  description  in  the 
writings  of  any  foreign  author  on  Uruguayan  politics. 
Even  so  skilled  an  observer,  so  admirable  a  student  of 
political  conditions,  as  Viscount  Bryce,  late  British  Am- 
bassador to  the  United  States,  fell  into  absurd  mis- 
statements  of  facts  in  what  he  wrote  of  Uruguayan 
affairs  in  his  "  South  America :  Observations  and  Im- 
pressions." As  I  have  not  had  an  opportunity  of 
reading  Lord  Bryce's  well-known  work,  and  personally 
know  it  only  through  numerous  extracts  translated  into 
the  native  journals  of  the  Argentine,  Uruguay,  and 
Chili,  it  would  be  ungracious  of  me  to  say  anything  in 
criticism  of  it,  beyond  the  passages  thus  coming  to  my 
notice.  Certainly  his  explanation  of  the  two  parties 
into  which  Uruguay  is  divided  is  no  better  than  the 
nonsense  one  hears  talked  among  casual  visitors  on 
whom  some  local  resident  has  been  performing  the 
the  operation  known  as  "  pulling  his  leg."  Translat- 
ing from  one  of  several  articles  on  the  work  in  ques- 
tion, which  appeared  in  La  Tribuna  Popular  of  Mon- 
tevideo, Lord  Bryce  is  made  to  write  to  this  effect : 

The  children  of  Uruguay  are  born  little  Blancos  or  little 
Colorados.  It  is  the  political  heritage  of  the  early  days  of 
Independence.  Scarcely  any  ever  desert  their  colours.  In  a 
White  district  it  is  dangerous  to  wear  a  red  necktie,  just  as 
it  is  in  Yolanda  (?  Irlanda  —  Ireland)  to  show  an  English 
badge. 

This  is  described  by  the  editor  as  "  a  very  pretty 
paragraph,"  and  here  is  another  which  he  quotes  as 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       415 

"  a  curious  paragraph  that  might  be  regarded  as  an 
example  of  Mr.  Bryce's  Yankee  humour  "  (for  he  is 
under  the  impression  that  the  literary  Viscount  is  a 
"  Yankee  Constitutionalist  ")  : 

General  Oribe  mounted  on  one  occasion  a  spirited  white 
horse.  On  seeing  this,  all  his  sympathisers  followed  his  ex- 
ample by  mounting  themselves  on  beautiful  white  steeds. 
Hence  came  the  name  of  the  White  Party.  General  Rivera, 
the  irreconcilable  enemy  of  Oribe,  mounted  himself  in  turn  on 
a  superb  horse  of  a  reddish  colour,  in  contrast  to  his  terrible 
rival.  The  Riveraists  then  sought  for  coloured  steeds,  and 
mounted  on  these  followed  their  chief.  Henceforward  the 
Red  Party  disputed  successfully  for  power  with  the  White 
Party. 

This,  of  course,  is  mere  moonshine.  It  may  pos- 
sibly have  originated  in  one  of  these  fertile  Uruguayan 
imaginations  of  which  we  have  heard,  but  it  lacks  his- 
torical truth.  I  have  already  indicated  that  Blancos  and 
Colorados  (the  latter  word,  by  the  way,  does  not  mean 
"coloured,"  but  signifies  "  red,"  or  "ruddy")  may 
live  together  in  perfect  amity.  So  incorrect  is  the 
statement  that  every  child  is  born  a  Blanco  or  a 
Colorado,  that  there  are  numerous  families  in  the 
country  divided  in  politics,  and  in  my  own  short  ex- 
perience I  have  met  instances  of  brothers  who  adhered 
to  different  parties.  I  recall  in  particular  two  brothers 
who,  in  a  perfectly  friendly  discussion,  admitted  that 
they  took  no  real  interest  in  the  politics  of  the  coun- 
try and  were  largely  indifferent  to  the  course  of  affairs, 
so  long  as  Uruguay  continued  to  prosper,  but  who,  be- 
fore the  evening  had  gone,  were  disputing  so  hotly  the 
respective  merits  of  the  two  parties  that  they  almost 


4i6  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

came  to  blows,   the  one  being  clearly  a  pronounced 
Blanco  and  the  other  an  equally  tenacious  Colorado. 

Another  very  curious  misstatement  of  fact  is  cited 
from  Lord  Bryce's  book  by  the  Tribuna,  which  ob- 
serves that  the  paragraph  is  a  revelation  of  "  the  rich 
imagination  of  its  author."  Our  eminent  publicist 
is  alleged  to  have  written  to  this  effect  with  reference 
to  revolutions  in  Uruguay: 

When  a  revolutionary  movement  is  about  to  break  out  in 
Uruguay,  the  organisers  make  an  appointment  to  meet, 
mounted,  at  a  certain  place  and  on  a  day  agreed  upon  before- 
hand. The  Government  always  knows  well  in  advance  of 
this,  and  is  able  to  possess  itself  of  all  the  horses  in  the  coun- 
try, keeping  those  in  a  safe  place  so  that  they  may  not  fall  into 
the  power  of  the  revolutionaries.  The  latter,  therefore,  re- 
main perforce  on  foot.  The  horse  is  the  soul  of  Uruguayan 
revolutionists.  It  is  the  heroic  tradition  of  the  glorious  epoch 
of  the  gauchos.  Without  horses  the  rebels  are  lost. 

The  amusement  of  the  Uruguayan  editor  over  these 
paragraphs  and  many  others  equally  distant  from  the 
truth  was  entirely  justified,  and  I  have  quoted  them 
here  (roughly  retranslating  them)  out  of  no  desire  to 
belittle  the  work  of  one  of  our  ablest  writers,  for  whom 
I  have  the  greatest  admiration,  but  merely  to  show 
how  erroneous  one's  impressions  may  be  as  the  result 
of  a  too  brief  visit,  and  lack  of  opportunity  to  study  at 
leisure  the  condition  of  a  country,  as  well  as  its  his- 
torical past,  as  these  have  been  expressed  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  country.  Such  misconceptions  are  fa- 
miliar to  us,  and  to  be  expected  in  the  writings  of  ir- 
responsible lady  globe-trotters,  but  not  in  the  sober  and 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       417 

authoritative  pages  of  one  who  has  given  us  such  a 
classic  as  "  The  American  Commonwealth." 

It  is  no  easy  matter  to  furnish  a  satisfactory  ex- 
planation of  the  two  political  parties  of  Uruguay,  and 
when  I  find  so  competent  an  authority  as  Mr.  C.  E. 
Akers,  in  his  "  History  of  South  America/'  affirming 
that  there  are  really  no  distinctions  between  them,  that 
each  professes  the  same  ideals  of  government  and  seeks 
merely  to  wrest  political  power  from  the  other,  I  at- 
tempt an  explanation  only  with  trepidation.  Not  that 
I  purpose  a  detailed  account  of  their  origins  and  evolu- 
tion, for  that  would  involve  an  extremely  long  dis- 
quisition, and  would  scarcely  hold  the  attention  of  an 
American  reader,  but  that  any  attempt  to  distinguish 
between  them  in  a  few  words  is  attended  with  diffi- 
culty and  apt  to  be  misleading. 

The  root  difference  of  the  two  parties  can  best  be 
described  as  Nationalist  versus  Progressist.  Broadly, 
the  White  Party  is  the  Nationalist  Party,  and  the 
Colorado  the  Progressist.  The  colours  distinguish  the 
Spanish  Colonial  origin  of  the  one  party  from  the 
democratic  origin  of  the  other.  That  is  to  say,  the 
Blancos  have  always  tended  towards  exclusiveness  and 
the  assertion  of  the  superiority  of  the  white  race, 
whereas  the  Colorados,  originally  sneered  at  by  the 
Blancos  as  savages  (salvages),  on  account  of  their 
more  liberal  ideas,  which  embraced  the  aborigine  and 
the  emigrant  alike,  have  always  stood  for  the  wider 
conception  of  democracy.  At  certain  times  in  their 
history,  the  Colorados  have  even  accepted  the  title  of 
"  savages  "  as  a  compliment  to  their  liberalism;  to  their 
maintenance  of  the  primal  rights  of  man.  Thus,  and 


4i8  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

not  otherwise,  have  the  colours  of  the  two  parties  a 
real  significance,  and  the  red  of  the  Colorados  is  also 
a  cry  back  to  the  French  Revolution,  the  influence  of 
which  on  South  American  democracy  has  been  pro- 
found. I  have  already  mentioned  in  my  passing  refer- 
ence to  the  home  of  Garibaldi  in  Montevideo,  that  that 
great  champion  of  liberty  commanded  a  Brazilian  regi- 
ment in  support  of  General  Rivera  when  General 
Oribe  was  laying  siege  to  Montevideo,  and  that  the 
city  was  defended  principally  by  French,  Italians,  and 
Brazilians  against  the  onsets  of  the  Blancos,  until  Oribe 
was  eventually  defeated  completely  by  the  Argentine 
general,  Urquiza.  This  historical  fact  is  entirely  in 
support  of  what  I  have  written,  and  will  help  to  eluci- 
date the  party  origins.  In  these  later  years,  although 
the  politics  of  the  country  are  still  split  up  between 
Reds  and  Whites,  it  has  become  more  common  to  refer 
to  the  latter  as  Nationalists,  they  themselves  having 
adopted  that  title.  Hence  appears  a  distinct  and  ap- 
preciable difference  between  the  two  political  camps. 

As  might  be  supposed  from  what  I  have  very 
roughly  indicated  as  to  the  respective  origins  of  the 
two  parties,  the  Blancos  are  strongest  in  the  provinces, 
and  draw  most  of  their  support  from  the  agricultural 
and  stock-raising  classes,  while  the  Colorados  prepon- 
derate in  the  capital  and  the  larger  towns,  where  mod- 
ern ideas  of  democracy  find  a  more  fertile  soil.  The 
policy  of  the  Blancos  is  exclusiveness  — "  Uruguay  for 
the  Uruguayans  "  might  be  its  battle-cry,  but,  paradox- 
ically, not  for  the  original  Uruguayans  —  while  the 
Colorados  are  for  encouraging  immigration  in  every 
way,  for  the  building  up  of  a  large  and  active  popula- 


A  TYPICAL  COUNTRY  ROAD  IN  URUGUAY 


HIDES   DRYING   AT    CURING    FACTORY   NEAR    MONTEVIDEO. 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS      419 

tion,  without  the  slightest  regard  to  racial  origins,  be- 
lieving that  once  radicated  in  the  country,  the  whole 
would  weld  itself  into  a  complex  nationality,  just  as  we 
see  in  the  making  in  Argentina. 

It  may  be  fortunate  for  Uruguay  that  the  Colorados 
have  been  in  power  for  many  years,  and  are  likely  to 
dominate  its  politics  for  many  years  more.  Yet  not 
altogether  fortunate,  as  the  supremacy  of  one  party 
over  another  is  good  for  neither,  and  leads  to  all  sorts 
of  governmental  abuses,  although  it  seems  to  me  that 
Red  supremacy  is  better  for  Uruguay  than  White. 
The  population  is  much  too  small  for  so  fruitful  a  coun- 
try, and  to  discourage  the  foreigner  from  becoming 
a  citizen  of  the  Republic,  as  the  policy  of  the  Blancos 
would  tend  in  their  devotion  to  narrow  Nationalist 
ideals,  might  retard  the  clock  of  progress  for  genera- 
tions. The  crying  need  of  Uruguay  is  population,  and 
not  even  the  Colorados  as  a  party  display  sufficient 
energy  in  encouraging  immigration,  though  individual 
leaders  grow  eloquent  on  the  subject  and  talk  at  great 
length  about  what  might  be  done,  without  being  able 
to  move  the  mass  swiftly  enough  along  the  path  of 
progress. 

I  would  not  have  you  think  that  the  Red  Party  has 
a  monopoly  of  the  truer  patriots.  There  are  too  many 
of  its  leaders  whose  sole  ambition  is  to  get  their  hands 
into  the  public  treasury,  and  in  this  they  succeed  all  too 
well.  Politics  from  the  profession  of  most  men  with 
ability  beyond  the  common,  and  place-seeking  is  the 
order  of  the  day.  The  Socialist  movement,  which  has 
recently  gathered  great  strength  in  the  Argentine,  is 
still  in  its  infancy  in  Uruguay  and  was  represented  at 


420  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  time  of  my  stay  there,  if  I  remember  aright,  by  only 
one  member  of  the  House  of  Deputies,  Senor  Frugoni, 
who  fought  incessantly  against  everything  in  the  shape 
of  public  expenditure  which  was  not  calculated  directly 
to  benefit  the  workers,  and  who  was  one  of  the  four 
deputies  that  opposed  in  July,  1913,  the  increase  of  the 
payment  of  the  national  representatives  by  $12  per 
day.  Jobbery  and  bribery  are  rampant  in  the  admin- 
istration; the  Government  is  regarded  by  the  ruck  of 
politicians  as  their  milch  cow,  and  though  all  public 
offices  are  remunerated  modestly  enough,  there  are 
numerous  ways  and  means  of  greatly  augmenting 
official  salaries.  The  smallness  of  the  population  and 
the  intimacy  which  exists  between  all  the  members  of 
the  better  classes  naturally  lay  the  officials  open  to 
every  form  of  personal  temptation,  and  I  never  heard 
that  "  Deliver  us  from  temptation  "  was  a  popular 
prayer  among  them. 

It  would  be  an  easy  matter  to  give  numerous  ex- 
amples of  the  abuses  that  exist,  but  one  will  suffice. 
A  burning  question  for  many  years  in  Montevideo  had 
been  the  paving  of  the  principal  streets  with  asphalt  in 
place  of  the  stone  sets,  or  adoquines,  with  which  they 
had  been  laid  for  generations,  and  which,  as  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned,  made  traffic  over  them  extremely 
noisy  and  unpleasant.  The  contract  for  this  work  at- 
tracted much  competition  from  abroad,  and  one  Euro- 
pean firm  was  even  encouraged  to  bring  over  workmen, 
material,  and  machinery  for  the  treatment  of  one  short 
street  as  a  sample  of  their  work.  The  said  work  ap- 
peared to  me  in  every  sense  satisfactory,  and  as  the 
firm  is  a  large  international  organisation,  capable  of 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       421 

handling  a  contract  of  any  dimension,  having  paved 
the  streets  of  many  a  city,  it  was  natural  to  suppose 
that  it  would  be  chosen  to  carry  out  the  street  improve- 
ments of  the  Uruguayan  capital.  But  no,  a  local  ex- 
hotel-keeper  was  favoured  with  this  important  con- 
tract! The  manner  in  which  he  organised  it  was  a 
splendid  lesson  in  the  art  of  how  not  to  do  it.  The 
principal  avenida  was  torn  up,  traffic  dislocated  for 
weeks,  yet  no  asphalt  was  laid,  because  the  enterprising 
contractor  had  omitted  to  secure  the  asphalt  before 
removing  the  cobbles.  Certain  streets  were  barred  to 
traffic  for  months  on  end,  mountains  of  dug-out  earth 
were  beaten  hard  under  the  feet  of  pedestrians,  who 
had  to  climb  over  them  on  their  way  to  and  from  their 
houses,  so  that  when  eventually  they  were  removed, 
they  were  so  solid  that  the  workmen  had  to  break  them 
up  with  pick-axes.  Everywhere  one  was  met  with 
barricades  of  stones  and  earth;  confusion  reigned  su- 
preme. 

The  greatest  scandal  of  all  is  that  laid  at  the  door  of 
President  Batlle  y  Ordonez,  and  may  yet  assume  the  im- 
portance of  an  international  dispute.  During  the  presi- 
dency of  his  predecessor,  an  international  syndicate,  in 
which  I  believe  both  French  and  English  shareholders 
invested  several  millions  of  money,  was  granted  a  con- 
cession to  carry  out  a  huge  enterprise,  which  would  so 
vastly  enhance  the  appearance  of  the  town  and  add  to 
its  wealth  that,  once  effected,  not  even  Rio  de  Janeiro 
could  be  cited  as  a  finer  example  of  a  modernised  city. 
At  the  present  time,  the  poorest  part  of  Montevideo 
is  that  lying  along  the  southern  margin  of  the  promon- 
tory, eastward  towards  the  suburb  of  Ramirez.  It 


422  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

has  a  rocky  fore-shore,  and  the  water  there  is  com- 
paratively shallow,  so  that  it  would  be  possible  to  re- 
claim a  considerable  amount  of  land  along  this  side  of 
the  town,  and  build  a  magnificent  marine  drive,  ex- 
tending all  the  way  from  the  oldest  part  of  the  city  to 
the  suburb  mentioned,  and  thence  linking  up  with  the 
fine  promenade  at  Pocitos.  Many  maps  of  the  city 
are  now  in  circulation  with  this  improvement  shown 
as  though  it  actually  existed,  the  great  highway  by  the 
waterside  being  marked  as  "  Rambla  Sud  America. " 

All  the  preliminary  work  of  surveying  and  getting 
ready  for  the  actual  construction  of  the  sea  wall,  and 
the  reclamation  from  the  water  of  an  immense  new 
area  for  the  extension  of  the  city,  was  carried  out  by 
the  foreign  company,  under  its  duly  authorised  con- 
cession, its  recompense  being  determined  by  the  lease 
for  a  certain  number  of  years  of  the  land  reclaimed. 
Then  President  Batlle  came  into  power  and  calmly 
"  squashed  "  the  whole  affair.  This  high-handed  ac- 
tion of  his  Was  based  upon  the  belief  that  it  would  be 
possible  for  the  government  to  carry  out  the  improve- 
ment and  enjoy  to  the  full  the  increased  revenue  which 
would  immediately  result  from  the  new  land  made 
available  for  building,  as  well  as  the  enhanced  value 
of  all  the  property  along  the  southern  shore.  The  un- 
dertaking is,  of  course,  hopelessly  beyond  the  compass 
of  native  enterprise,  and  the  action  of  the  President 
may  be  ascribed  to  that  vivid  imagination  of  which  we 
have  already  heard  as  part  of  the  mental  make-up  of 
the  Uruguayan.  He  by  no  means  carried  with  him 
the  sympathies  of  his  party  in  this  matter,  and  many 
of  the  newspapers  of  Montevideo  would  grow  as  in- 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       423 

dignant  over  the  scandal  of  the  Rambla  Sud  as  the 
enterprising  European  promoters  of  the  scheme  them- 
selves. 

Mention  of  this  subject  serves  to  raise  the  question 
of  a  very  grave  defect  in  the  constitution  of  the  Re- 
public. It  is  a  strange  anomaly  that  in  a  country  which 
prides  itself  upon  its  democratic  spirit,  its  President 
should  be  endowed  with  powers  that  are  little  short  of 
dictatorial.  This  is  its  legacy  from  the  old  days  of 
military  predominance,  when  the  Presidency  went  to 
the  military  officer  who  could  secure  command  of  the 
army,  just  as  surely  as  the  Praetorian  Guard  used  to 
make  and  unmake  the  Caesars  of  Rome.  As  a  party, 
the  Colorados  are  in  favour  of  reform,  and  would  like 
to  see  a  diminution  of  the  power  which  the  constitution 
places  in  the  hands  of  the  President,  but  Senor  Batlle  y 
Ordonez,  who  not  so  many  years  ago  was  a  struggling 
journalist,  and  still  as  editor  of  El  Dia  combines  jour- 
nalism with  the  business  of  President,  took  the  initia- 
tive in  a  new  constitutional  "  reform  "  in  1912,  which 
speedily  resulted  in  his  becoming  the  most  unpopular 
man  in  the  country.  His  earlier  career  had  been  that 
of  a  loud  and  strenuous  Democrat  and  his  first  presi- 
dency gave  fairly  general  satisfaction,  but  when  he  re- 
turned for  a  second  time  to  the  seat  of  power,  his  ac- 
tions soon  ceased  to  be  those  of  an  essential  Democrat. 

Still  he  maintained  a  measure  of  public  sympathy 
for  the  able  manner  in  which  he  handled  national  af- 
fairs —  as  the  constitution,  with  all  its  faults,  works 
well,  provided  the  President  uses  it  only  for  the  good 
of  the  country  —  but  the  imperious  spirit  which  he 
developed,  and  his  harsh  treatment  of  political  op- 


424  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

ponents,  speedily  changed  the  attitude  of  the  people, 
and  when  he  launched  his  extraordinary  scheme  for 
reforming  the  constitution,  he  found  himself  almost 
alone,  with  the  overwhelming  majority  of  senators  and 
deputies  opposed  to  him.  Being  a  man  of  virility,  he 
refused  to  trim  his  sails,  and  went  straight  ahead  with 
the  reckless  campaign,  denouncing  old  colleagues  who 
had  fallen  away  from  him  in  terms  of  unmeasured 
abuse  in  his  daily  paper,  and  refusing  to  give  any  of 
them  the  personal  satisfaction  of  a  duel,  that  being  in- 
compatible with  his  office  of  President.  A  sort  of 
comic  opera  situation  thus  developed,  the  President  as 
journalist  lashing  about  him  at  his  own  sweet  will  in 
his  editorial  columns,  but  refusing  to  meet  the  vic- 
tims of  his  wrath  at  the  point  of  the  sword  or  pistol 
in  hand,  as  many  of  them  invited  him  to  do  1 

The  reading  of  some  of  Senor  Batlle's  articles  in 
favour  of  his  proposed  reform  might  have  left  any  one 
unfamiliar  with  the  real  import  of  the  movement  with 
the  impression  that  he  was  that  rarest  of  mortals 
among  statesmen  ancient  or  modern:  the  man  who 
finds  himself  endowed  with  powers  so  dangerous,  if 
exercised  without  discretion,  that  he  wishes  to  curtail 
these  for  the  protection  of  his  fellow  countrymen  and 
to  free  himself  from  the  temptation  of  abusing  them. 
Day  after  day  he  used  to  hold  forth  in  the  editorial 
column  of  El  Dia,  on  the  dire  possibilities  that  might 
succeed  to  a  country  that  placed  itself  under  the  almost 
autocratic  control  of  one  man,  on  "  the  instability  of 
unipersonal  power,"  and  "  the  anti-democratic  char- 
acter of  absolutism."  To  the  onlooker  all  this  was 
vastly  amusing,  and  to  the  intelligent  mass  of  Uru- 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS      425 

guayans  the  intention  of  the  proposed  reform  was  as 
transparent  as  glass.  Senor  Batlle  urged  that  an 
ejecutivo  colegiado,  to  consist,  I  think,  of  seven  mem- 
bers, like  the  Swiss  Federal  Council,  should  be  elected 
to  co-operate  with  the  President  in  the  government  of 
the  country,  and  that  from  this  executive  body  each 
new  President  might  be  chosen.  In  this  way,  he  con- 
tended, it  would  be  possible  to  limit  the  authority  of 
any  President  by  placing  the  executive  power  in  the 
hands  of  a  group.  Of  course,  it  was  obvious  to  all 
thinking  people  that  what  he  was  after  was  merely  to 
secure,  before  the  end  of  his  four  years  of  office,  the 
election  of  seven  of  his  personal  friends  to  form  this 
new  executive,  so  that  when  he  had  to  withdraw  from 
the  Presidency  he  could  still,  from  his  home  in  Piedras 
Blancas,  work  the  puppets,  and  the  chief  of  the  pup- 
pets would  be  his  successor.  He  laid  much  stress  in 
his  newspaper  advocacy  of  the  ejecutive  colegiado  on 
example  of  Switzerland,  which  he  was  fond  of  quoting 
as  the  ideal  of  a  democratic  state,  but  in  no  respect  was 
there  the  slightest  resemblance  between  the  Swiss 
method  of  government  and  that  proposed  by  him. 
The  Swiss  Federal  Council  is  elected  by  the  Fed- 
eral Assembly,  and  consists  of  citizens  who  hold 
no  other  public  offices  and  are  engaged  in  no  busi- 
ness or  profession.  But  the  seven  (or  it  may  have 
been  nine)  who  were  to  share  the  responsibility  of  the 
Uruguayan  President  and  thus  intensify  by  seven  or 
nine  times  the  dangerous  character  of  the  presidential 
power,  were  to  be  neither  representative  of  the  people 
nor  of  the  Colorado  Party,  but  merely  representative 
of  President  Batlle. 


426  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

A  more  preposterous  suggestion  could  not  have  been 
made  by  the  temporary  ruler  of  a  sane  people,  and  the 
surprise  was  that  the  President  could  even  muster  his 
stage  army  of  standard  bearers  and  demonstration- 
ists who  used  to  parade  the  town  in  favour  of  the  "  re- 
form," while  he  himself  was  afraid  to  venture  from 
his  suburban  retreat  to  the  Government  House, — 
where  he  ought  to  have  been  in  residence, —  more  than 
once  every  two  or  three  months  and  at  unlikely  hours. 
They  used  to  have  a  healthy  habit  in  Montevideo  of 
shooting  a  President  who  abused  his  power,  and  Serior 
Batlle  was  so  familiar  with  the  past  history  of  his  in- 
teresting little  country  that  among  the  numerous  arti- 
cles published  by  him  in  El  Dia  to  illustrate  the  in- 
stability of  the  present  constitution  was  one  giving  a 
list  of  all  the  Presidents  from  Rivera  onward,  with 
notes  of  the  disturbances  which  occurred  during  their 
terms  of  office,  how  so  many  of  them  had  to  fly  for 
their  lives,  how  some  were  killed,  and  few  indeed  com- 
pleted their  term  without  witnessing  insurrection  and 
sanguinary  disturbances.  During  his  own  previous 
term  of  office,  the  revolution  of  1904  occurred,  and  he 
had  a  narrow  escape  from  death  by  the  explosion  of  a 
mine.  In  the  succeeding  four  years  of  Senor  Claudio 
Williman's  presidency,  two  revolutions  occurred,  one  of 
these  assuming  serious  proportions.  Hence  President 
Batlle  did  not  unduly  flaunt  his  personality  in  public 
places  during  our  summer  in  Montevideo,  in  marked 
contrast,  I  was  told,  to  the  manner  of  his  previous  presi- 
dency, when  he  went  about  freely  everywhere  and  was 
probably  the  most  popular  man  in  the  Republic. 

The  most  interesting  episode  in  his  strange  cam- 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS      427 

paign  against  popular  sentiment  was  the  publication  in 
his  own  journal  of  several  paragraphs  in  black  type 
headed  Permanente,  which  roused  the  ire  of  every 
person  of  good  taste  throughout  the  Republic,  and 
welded  for  once  the  whole  press,  Blanco  and  Colorado, 
into  one.  As  this  incident  throws  a  vivid  little  side- 
light on  the  politics  of  the  country,  I  venture  to  trans- 
late the  paragraphs  in  question,  which  were  reprinted 
daily  in  the  Presidential  journal,  and  have  probably 
only  ceased  to  appear  since  the  death  of  the  aged  poli- 
tician at  whom  they  were  aimed : 

PERMANENT. 

It  is  an  undeniable  fact,  and  well-known  that  Dr.  Jose 
Pedro  Ramirez  in  1873  purchased  the  vote  of  the  Deputy 
Isaac  de  Tezanos  for  the  sum  of  40,000  pesos,  in  favour  of 
the  candidature  for  the  Presidency  of  the  Republic  of  his 
father-in-law,  Dr.  Don  Jose  Maria  Mufioz. 

It  seems  very  probable  that  the  same  occurred  with  regard 
to  the  votes  of  the  deputies  Hermogenes  Formoso  and  Vicente 
Garzon. 

From  publications  in  El  Siglo  of  that  period,  it  would  seem 
that  at  the  same  time  as  he  was  thus  purchasing  these,  Dr. 
Jose  Pedro  Ramirez  was  accusing  the  Gomensor  faction  of 
having  offered  nearly  three  times  as  much  for  the  votes  of  the 
same  deputies  —  which  he  well  knew  to  be  a  calumny,  since 
he  himself  had  purchased  them  for  much  less. 

The  result  of  these  infamies  was  the  military  mutiny  of 
1875,  and  five  lustres  of  misfortunes  for  the  country. 

All  this  notwithstanding,  the  Nationalist  Party,  the  Con- 
stitutionalists that  still  remain,  and  a  few  disaffected  Colo- 
rados  are  rendering  homage  to  Dr.  Ramirez,  whom  they  pro- 
claim as  the  first,  or  one  of  the  first  citizens  of  the  Republic. 


428  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Those  who  so  act  are  corrupting  public  morals  and  robbing 
themselves  of  authority  and  prestige. 

This  extraordinary  presidential-journalistic  attack 
on  an  aged  politician,  then  so  feeble  and  near  his  end 
that  he  died  a  few  months  later,  was  occasioned  chiefly 
because  the  journal  El  Siglo,  one  of  the  most  influ- 
ential of  the  Colorado  newspapers,  with  which  Dr. 
Ramirez,  as  a  young  man,  was  connected,  and  with 
which  certain  of  his  relatives  are  now  associated,  had, 
in  common  with  the  entire  press  of  the  country, 
strongly  opposed  the  President's  suggested  reform. 
For  nearly  forty  years  the  country  had  chosen  to  for- 
get that  Dr.  Ramirez  had  so  acted  in  1873,  and  he 
himself  at  that  time  publicly  made  confession  of  what 
he  had  done,  and  withdrew  from  his  journalistic  post 
as  an  act  of  penance,  although  assuredly  he  had  in  no 
wise  sinned  against  the  spirit  of  that  time.  The  spec- 
tacle of  the  President  of  the  Republic  using  the  col- 
umns of  his  own  private  journal  thus  to  attack  the 
aged  publicist  who,  in  the  forty  years  following  this 
admitted  transgression,  had  done  much  to  merit  the 
good  opinion  and  win  the  homage  of  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen, ranged  every  journalist  of  any  prestige  against 
President  Batlle  and  brought,  as  I  well  remember, 
streams  of  telegrams  from  distant  parts  of  South 
America,  from  eminent  statesmen  and  the  leading 
newspapers,  sympathising  with  the  victim  of  the  Presi- 
dent's attack. 

What  may  be  the  ultimate  outcome  of  those  strange 
events  of  the  summer  of  1913,  I  do  not  know,  but  per- 
haps I  have  said  sufficient  about  the  politics  of  the 
country  to  show  that  there  is  room  for  improvement. 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS      429 

At  the  same  time,  to  do  justice  to  Sefior  Batlle  y 
Ordonez,  I  recognise  in  him  a  really  strong  man,  and 
regret  that  his  second  term  of  office  should  have  been 
so  marred  by  ill-considered  and  anti-democratic  sug- 
gestions of  constitutional  change.  He  had  previously 
won  a  reputation  for  political  honesty  which,  even 
among  his  bitterest  enemies,  I  never  heard  called  in 
question,  and  much  that  he  did,  even  during  his  sec- 
ond stormy  administration,  was  entirely  for  the  good 
of  the  country.  I  remember  that  at  the  height  of  his 
battle  with  the  Chambers  and  the  public,  he  promul- 
gated a  new  law  for  the  protection  of  animals,  accom- 
panied by  a  presidential  message  worthy  to  be  printed 
in  letters  of  gold  by  the  R.  S.  P.  C.  A.  and  circulated 
throughout  all  Latin-America.  He  even  went  so  far 
as  to  prohibit  boxing  matches,  as  el  box,  a  growing 
passion  in  the  Argentine,  was  beginning  to  acquire 
popularity  in  Uruguay.  Had  his  energies  been  more 
wisely  directed  and  his  undoubted  strength  of  char- 
acter applied  to  the  furtherance  of  certain  much-needed 
public  improvements  and  to  the  real  widening  of  the 
democratic  basis  of  the  Constitution,  he  might  have 
made  his  second  administration  a  landmark  in  Uru- 
guayan progress. 

Progress  is  inevitable,  and  if  it  has  been  retarded 
in  Uruguay  by  the  frequent  revolutionary  disturbances, 
it  has  been  none  the  less  real.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we 
are  apt  to  overestimate  the  importance  of  these  revolu- 
tions. Before  the  dawn  of  the  modern  commercial 
era,  which  has  so  greatly  developed  the  capital  city, 
revolutions  were  doubtless  vastly  disturbing  and  made 
the  life  of  the  community  somewhat  burdensome.  But 


430  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

it  is  surprising  to  note  how  large  a  proportion  of  the 
population  have  survived  these  supposedly  sanguinary 
affairs.  You  will  see  far  more  elderly  people  in  Mon- 
tevideo than  in  Buenos  Ayres,  where  men  of  over  fifty- 
five  are  rarities  in  the  streets.  The  fact  is  that 
Uruguayan  revolutions  have  degenerated  into  some- 
thing very  much  akin  to  the  duel  in  France,  and  they 
are  usually  fought  where  there  is  likely  to  be  the  least 
danger  to  property,  as  Whites  and  Reds  alike  have 
come  to  appreciate  the  advantages  of  modern  domes- 
tic comfort,  and  the  more  beautiful  villas  there  are 
erected  in  the  suburbs  and  surroundings  of  Monte- 
video, the  less  likely  are  revolutions  to  occur.  Most 
of  those  of  recent  date  have  been  really  very  little  more 
serious  than  the  old  election  rioting  that  used  to  ac- 
company political  changes  in  our  own  country. 

One  effect  of  revolution,  however,  has  been  to  pro- 
duce a  remarkable  shortage  of  horse  flesh  throughout 
the  Republic.  Oh  the  outbreak  of  an  insurrection,  the 
Government  used  to  "  commandeer "  horses  every- 
where, and  would  clean  an  estancia  of  all  its  useful 
animals,  handing  over  to  the  owner  so  much  worth- 
less paper,  which  he  was  supposed  to  be  able  some  day 
to  redeem  for  the  loss  of  his  horses.  Not  only  so, 
but  his  peones  would  be  pressed  in  like  manner  into 
the  Government  service,  armed  with  rifles  and  sent 
out  to  fight  the  revolutionaries.  After  periodic  losses 
in  this  manner,  the  estanciero  adopted  the  policy  of 
breeding  and  maintaining  just  as  few  horses  as  he 
could  possibly  do  with.  Result:  in  Uruguay,  a  coun- 
try where  horses  should  abound,  the  cavalry  are  in- 
sufficiently mounted,  a  very  considerable  proportion  of 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       431 

the  Government  troops  being  without  mounts.  This 
fact,  by  the  way,  is  the  best  comment  that  can  be  passed 
upon  Viscount  Bryce's  paragraph  quoted  in  the  earlier 
part  of  this  chapter. 

We  have  heard  about  the  warrior  spirit  of  the 
Uruguayan,  but,  strangely  enough,  it  does  not  manifest 
itself  in  a  warrior  nation.  There  is  no  system  of  mili- 
tary service  in  the  Republic,  such  as  that  of  the  Ar- 
gentine. Nay,  until  very  recently  the  army  was  looked 
down  upon  by  the  better-class  families  as  a  profession 
for  their  sons,  and  was  no  more  than  the  happy  hunt- 
ing-ground of  all  sorts  of  adventurers,  the  rank  and 
file  being  chiefly  niggers,  Indians,  and  half-breeds, 
while  many  of  the  officers  were  themselves  either  of 
negro  or  Indian  blood.  Even  to-day,  when  men  of 
good  family  are  looking  to  the  army  for  a  career  and 
military  training  is  being  organised  on  European  lines, 
the  army  is  still  composed  in  large  part  of  undesirables 
and  is  used  entirely  as  a  Government  machine.  Both 
political  parties  have  hesitated  at  compulsory  service 
for  fear  of  each  other.  The  Colorados  have  care- 
fully nursed  the  army  during  their  long  spell  of  power 
as  so  many  paid  fighting  men  to  back  up  their  party  at 
such  times  as  the  Blancos  take  arms  against  it.  Here 
again,  it  will  be  seen  there  is  room  for  improvement 
in  Uruguayan  affairs. 

I  had  not  intended  in  these  notes  to  be  led  into  any 
lengthy  discussion  of  Uruguayan  politics,  as  that  is  a 
subject  which  tempts  one  into  such  labyrinthine  by- 
ways that  it  is  best  left  alone,  and  yet  it  is  difficult  to 
say  anything  about  the  country  in  general  into  which 
political  considerations  do  not  enter.  I  should  have 


432  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

preferred  to  have  enlarged  rather  on  the  literary  side 
of  the  people,  which  engaged  me  even  more  than  the 
politics  and  the  warlike  spirit  —  which,  by  the  way, 
used  to  seem  to  me  curiously  out  of  place  when  I  passed 
the  extremely  modest  little  building,  about  the  size  of 
a  suburban  police  station,  that  does  duty  for  the 
Uruguayan  War  Office.  But  I  find  it  difficult  to  touch 
with  any  satisfaction  on  all  the  subjects  that  occur  to 
me  as  worthy  of  note. 

The  literary  activity  is  certainly  remarkable  when 
we  bear  in  mind  the  extremely  limited  public  to  which 
Uruguayan  authors  can  appeal.  Two  very  stout 
volumes  of  a  critical  survey  of  Uruguayan  literature 
were  published  at  the  end  of  1912,  and  these  were  but 
the  advance  guard  of  others  to  follow,  the  work  being 
designed  to  occupy  several  bulky  tomes.  The  roll  of 
Uruguayan  authors  in  poetry  and  prose  is  truly  a 
formidable  one,  though  I  doubt  if  more  than  two  names 
would  be  known  in  the  United  States,  and  these  of  liv- 
ing authors  whose  reputations,  but  not  their  works,  may 
be  familiar  to  a  small  circle  of  American  critics.  Juan 
Zorilla  de  San  Martin  is  the  great  poet  of  the  coun- 
try, and  Jose  Enrique  Rodo  its  leading  philosophic 
writer.  Both  are  famous  throughout  Latin-America 
and  Spain,  and  both  very  remarkable  men,  who  have 
had  to  look  to  politics  as  well  as  to  literature  in  their 
struggle  for  a  living. 

Sefior  Rodo,  who  is  one  of  the  deputies  for  Mon- 
tevideo, is  recognised  as  a  master  of  Spanish  style,  a 
great  critic  of  literature,  and  a  philosopher  in  whom 
there  are  many  points  of  contact  with  Lord  Morley, 
as  they  belong  to  the  same  liberal  school  of  thought. 


THE  CALLE  SAN  MARTIN,  MENDOZA. 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  RIVER  MLNDOZA. 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       433 

Withal,  he  is  one  of  the  last  of  the  Bohemians,  so  far 
as  that  implies  absolute  disregard  for  sartorial  dis- 
play and  the  unbusinesslike  ordering  of  his  daily  life. 
You  will  meet  him  at  all  strange  hours  of  the  night 
wandering  about  the  streets,  lonely  and  contemplative, 
and  if  you  glance  at  his  shirt  cuff  when  shaking  hands 
you  will  find  it  soiled  and  scribbled  over  with  many 
pencilled  notes.  He  has  all  the  old-world  courtesy  of 
the  Spaniard,  with  the  wider  outlook  of  the  American 
mind,  and,  above  all,  a  profound  admiration  for  Eng- 
lish character  and  Anglo-Saxon  civilisation.  His 
opinion  is  sought  on  great  public  questions  and  on  mat- 
ters of  literature  from  all  parts  of  South  America,  and 
I  have  often  thought  it  strange  that  this  rather  shabbily 
dressed  and  retiring  gentleman  whom  I  used  to  meet 
wandering  lonely  in  the  dusk  up  side  streets,  and  with 
whom  I  would  stop  and  gossip  for  five  or  ten  minutes 
on  my  way  home,  was  the  object  of  admiration  of 
literary  circles  wherever  Spanish-American  men  of  let- 
ters gathered  together  —  el  gran  Rocto! 

Senor  Zorilla  de  San  Martin  is  of  a  different  type, 
shorter  in  stature  and  more  pronouncedly  Spanish  in 
appearance,  with  the  darting  fire  and  restlessness  of 
the  imaginative  Oriental  rather  than  the  careless  re- 
pose of  his  philosophic  contemporary.  He  is  essen- 
tially a  poet,  though  his  signature  appears  on  all  the 
bank  notes  of  Uruguay,  by  virtue  of  some  official  post 
he  used  to  hold.  He  has  also  represented  his  coun- 
try at  the  Court  of  Spain,  and  been  honoured  in  many 
ways  by  the  nation  which  is  justly  proud  of  his  poetic 
achievement,  for  in  Tabare,  his  epic  of  early  Spanish 
life  in  Uruguay,  he  has  produced  one  of  the  modern 


434  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

Castillian  classics.  I  found  him  a  perfervid  Shake- 
spearean, also  a  keen  admirer  of  Carlyle,  whose  por- 
trait holds  the  place  of  honour  in  his  study,  although 
he  confessed  that  it  was  a  struggle  to  follow  the  sage 
of  Chelsea  in  the  original,  and  he  most  frequently  read 
him  in  French  translations.  Neither  of  these  eminent 
Uruguayans,  by  the  way,  though  owning  indebtedness 
to  our  English  literature,  had  acquired  a  speaking 
knowledge  of  our  language,  French  appealing  to  them, 
as  it  does  to  the  great  majority  of  the  educated  Latin- 
Americans,  more  readily  than  English. 

One  thing  that  struck  me  not  only  in  the  literature  of 
the  country  and  in  the  manifestations  of  its  political 
thinkers,  but  in  all  the  evidences  of  its  daily  life,  was 
how  slightly  indeed  has  the  tremendous  modern  de- 
velopment of  the  Argentine  affected  Uruguay.  Just 
as  the  great  current  of  emigration  passes  its  shores 
and  does  no  more  than  dash  a  little  spray,  in  the  form 
of  a  few  stray  emigrants,  into  Uruguay,  so  the  prog- 
ress of  the  Argentine  has  affected  hardly  at  all  the  life 
of  Uruguay.  It  is  a  distinct  and  highly  individualised 
entity.  Though  essentially  Spanish  in  character,  and 
originally  part  of  the  vice-royalty  of  Spain,  Uruguay 
had  to  secure  its  independence,  not  from  the  mother- 
land, but  from  Brazil,  of  which  it  was  a  province  up  to 
August  25,  1825.  There  is  much  talk  among  Argen- 
tine statesmen  of  the  chauvinist  variety,  of  annexing  it 
to  the  greater  republic,  but  geographically  it  is  not 
meant  to  be  Argentine  territory,  the  River  Plate  on  the 
south  and  the  Uruguay  on  the  west  being  natural 
boundaries,  while  the  Brazilian  frontier  is  artificial. 
Less  likely  is  it  ever  again  to  pass  under  the  control  of 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       435 

Brazil,  and  it  really  serves  a  useful  political  purpose 
as  something  of  a  buffer  state  between  the  two  great 
republics  of  the  Southern  continent. 

The  most  notable  Argentine  influence  to  be  detected 
in  Montevideo  is  the  passion  for  highly  polished  boots ! 
I  have  often  been  amused  to  notice  workmen  on  their 
way  from  their  tasks  carefully  dusting  their  boots  with 
their  handkerchiefs  to  keep  themselves  "  in  the  move- 
ment" Like  all  little  countries,  it  is  intensely  proud 
of  itself,  tenacious  of  its  independence,  and  conscious 
of  a  certain  superiority  to  both  of  its  great  neighbours 
in  the  higher  standard  of  intellectualism  which  it  has 
developed.  Talk  of  Argentine  annexation  to  an  Uru- 
guayan, and  you  will  speedily  see  that  warrior  spirit  of 
which  we  have  already  heard  a  good  deal. 

In  the  preceding  chapter,  certain  distinctions  be- 
tween the  social  life  of  the  two  republics  have  been 
mentioned,  but  not  the  prevalence  of  the  old  Andalu- 
sian  custom  of  love-making.  This  is  one  of  the  fea- 
tures of  Montevidean  life  that  give  a  quaint  touch  to 
the  street  scenes,  as  every  evening  the  lovers  may  be 
observed  standing  on  the  pavement  outside  the  barred 
windows,  talking  to  the  girls  within.  This,  I  fancy, 
is  similar  to  the  Mexican  custom  known  as  "  playing 
bear/'  and  very  strange  it  looks  to  the  wanderer  from 
other  shores.  If  a  young  man  falls  in  love  with  a 
Montevidean  damsel,  he  must  find  some  means  of  be- 
ing introduced  to  her  father  and  gaining  permission  to 
pay  court  to  his  daughter,  for  which  purpose  two 
nights  of  the  week  will  be  set  apart,  when  he  is  at  lib- 
erty to  visit  her  in  the  presence  of  her  family,  and  this, 
mark  you,  takes  place  before  the  lovers  will  have  ex- 


436  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

changed  a  spoken  word.  The  sweetheart  is  not  sup- 
posed to  meet  the  young  lady  at  any  other  time  except 
on  those  appointed  evenings,  not  even  in  the  street  is 
he  expected  to  stop  and  talk  to  her,  and  he  can  only 
take  her  to  the  theatre  duly  chaperoned  by  a  sister  or 
other  relative.  The  courtship,  too,  is  only  permitted 
on  the  distinct  understanding  that  the  young  man  in- 
tends to  propose  marriage  to  the  young  lady,  anything 
approaching  the  casual  American  courtships  being  rigor- 
ously ruled  out.  Then  comes  the  ceremony  known  as  el 
cambio  de  argollas,  or  change  of  rings,  to  which,  much 
as  we  should  invite  a  large  wedding  party,  all  the 
friends  of  the  sweethearts  are  bidden;  presents  are 
given,  and  the  engaged  couple  present  each  other  with 
a  ring.  When  the  marriage  time  draws  near,  the  lover 
must  himself  make  all  arrangements  for  the  house, 
endeavouring  to  interpret  as  best  he  can  the  taste  of 
his  future  wife,  who  takes  no  part  in  these  prelim- 
inaries, until  another  ceremonial  occasion,  known  as 
la  visita  de  vistas,  when,  accompanied  by  some  friends 
and  her  future  husband,  she  goes  to  see  the  home  he 
has  prepared  for  her.  These  customs,  chiefly  of 
Spanish  origin,  are  more  observed  in  Uruguay  than  on 
the  other  side  of  the  River  Plate,  and  help,  among 
many  others,  to  emphasise  the  differences  that  exist 
between  the  two  peoples. 

It  is  well-known,  of  course,  that  Uruguayan  credit 
in  Europe  has  not  stood  as  high  of  recent  years  as 
the  splendid  possibilities  of  the  country  ought  to  war- 
rant, due  to  the  fact  that  a  great  deal  of  the  money 
borrowed  in  the  past  for  public  improvements  has 
found  its  way  into  the  wrong  pockets,  and  also  in  some 


URUGUAY:  NOTES  AND  IMPRESSIONS       437 

degree  to  the  high-handed  action  of  President  Batlle 
in  regard  to  the  affair  of  the  Rambla  Sud.  In  1913, 
the  treasury  had  fallen  so  low  that  it  was  not  able  to 
pay  all  the  Civil  Servants  their  salaries,  but  a  new  loan 
has  just  been  floated  at  the  time  these  lines  are  being 
written,  which  will  enable  the  Government  to  pay  its 
way  for  some  time  to  come,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
the  spirit  of  international  friendship  and  co-operation 
which  has  worked  to  such  splendid  issues  in  the  Argen- 
tine, and  is  really  part  of  the  Colorado  policy  in  Uru- 
guay, may  so  develop  that  this  highly  favoured  little 
country  shall  turn  its  attention  in  a  more  businesslike 
and  earnest  way  to  the  development  of  its  great  nat- 
ural resources. 

One  of  the  curses  of  Uruguay  is  the  prevalence  of 
consumption,  to  combat  which  an  admirably  managed 
association  is  in  existence,  and  a  great  annual  collec- 
tion is  made  on  el  Dia  de  los  Tuberculosos,  September 
i  st.  The  extraordinary  energy  with  which  this  move- 
ment has  been  taken  up,  the  immense  sums  of  money 
realised  by  the  collections  throughout  the  Republic,  and 
the  admirable  way  in  which  the  whole  thing  is  or- 
ganised by  the  Uruguayan  Anti-consumption  League, 
were  proofs  to  me  of  the  genuine  spirit  of  public  serv- 
ice that  does  exist  in  the  country,  and  evidences  of 
what  that  spirit  may  yet  achieve. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

FROM   THE   RIVER   PLATE   TO   THE   ANDES 

EARLY  in  April  we  made  another  journey  to  Buenos 
Ayres,  and  thence  to  Ensenada,  the  port  of  La  Plata, 
where,  in  the  company  of  friends,  I  had  to  bid  good-bye 
to  my  wife,  with  whom  the  changeful  climate  had  dealt 
none  too  kindly.  Just  a  year  before,  we  had  set  out 
to  revel  in  the  sunshine  of  the  golden  South,  and  now 
one  of  us,  after  a  year  of  many  changing  weathers,  was 
gladly  setting  sail  for  the  grey  North,  resolved  never 
again  to  say  one  word  against  its  climate,  while  the 
other  would  no  less  willingly  have  bid  good-bye  to  the 
River  Plate,  but  that  matters  of  importance  held  him 
to  South  America  and  the  promise  of  many  new  scenes 
and  far  journeyihgs  for  well-nigh  another  year. 

It  was  with  a  curious  sense  of  loneliness  that  I  found 
myself  back  in  Montevideo,  not  at  our  old  quarters  in 
the  Calle  Sarandi,  but  comfortably  accommodated  in 
the  Hotel  Oriental,  for  some  three  weeks  more,  ere  I 
too  had  to  take  leave  of  the  River  Plate.  Those  few 
weeks  in  that  hotel,  which  is  situated  hard  by  the  quay 
and  is  the  favourite  house  of  call  for  all  English  and 
American  voyagers  making  a  flying  visit  to  the  port, 
went  past  much  quicker  than  I  had  hoped.  I  found  it 
greatly  improved  since  my  earlier  visits,  so  that  it  had 
assumed  almost  an  English  aspect  in  the  matter  of  ap- 
pointments, while  the  cuisine  was  excellent.  The 
brother  and  sister  who  conduct  it  showed  a  very  gra- 

438 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES      439 

clous  spirit  of  service  to  their  guests,  and  I  noticed 
that  in  view  of  the  increasing  popularity  of  their  es- 
tablishment with  English-speaking  visitors,  the  lady 
was  beginning  to  study  their  language,  of  which  at 
that  time  she  knew  only  a  few  words,  though  she  spoke 
French  fluently  in  addition  to  her  native  tongue. 

Many  nights  of  billiard  matches  at  the  English  Club 
linger  in  my  memory  of  these  concluding  weeks,  and 
particularly  I  recall  the  happy  smiling  face  of  one  of 
the  members  there,  who  went  about  radiating  joy  be- 
cause he  had  just  managed  to  arrange  for  leave  of 
absence  in  October.  His  wife  —  like  so  many  of  the 
wives  of  the  exiles  —  had  been  forced  to  return  home 
a  year  or  so  before  that  time,  and  the  seven  months 
that  now  separated  him  from  wife  and  home  seemed 
so  short  by  anticipation,  in  comparison  with  the  lonely 
months  he  had  put  behind  him,  that  you  might  have 
thought  he  was  setting  sail  next  day.  I  fear  there  are 
many  sad  hearts  among  the  British  on  the  River 
Plate,  and  many  lives  being  poorly  lived,  for  one  en- 
counters scores  of  husbands  left  lonely  in  these  towns 
because  their  wives  have  found  the  life  so  little  to  their 
taste,  or  the  climate,  with  its  sudden  changes  from 
hot  to  cold,  too  much  for  their  physical  resistance. 
Can  anything  be  more  unsatisfactory  than  thus  to  wear 
away  the  best  years  of  one's  life?  Several  Britishers 
with  whom  I  became  acquainted,  whose  duties  kept 
them  on  the  River  Plate,  had  lived  there  alone,  with 
only  triennial  visits  to  their  wives  and  families  in  Eng- 
land, for  periods  ranging  from  ten  to  fifteen  years. 
Some  of  these  gentlemen  had  made,  or  were  making, 
considerable  fortunes,  but  I  must  confess  I  envied  none 


440  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

the  wealth  which  they  were  securing  at  so  great  a  sac- 
rifice of  domestic  happiness. 

Still,  I  would  not  have  you  think  that  my  thoughts 
were  tinged  with  melancholy  when  I  stepped  aboard 
the  old  river  steamer  Eolo,  on  which  so  often  I  had 
journeyed  between  the  two  great  cities  of  the  Sil- 
ver River,  after  bidding  good-bye  to  a  group  of  friends, 
among  whom  was  no  fellow-countryman,  to  look  for 
the  last  time  on  the  dancing  lights  of  the  fairy  scene 
which  the  Bay  of  Montevideo  presents  each  night  to 
those  on  shipboard.  In  Montevideo  our  time  had 
passed,  on  the  whole,  agreeably;  excepting  one  tre- 
mendous storm  of  rain  and  hail,  when  fiercest  thun- 
der rolled  and  lightning  swept  the  streets  in  blind- 
ing flashes,  it  had  been  a  time  of  sunshine  and 
fair  weather, —  sunshine  tempered  with  refreshing 
breezes, —  so  that,  after  all,  we  had  found  something 
of  which  we  went  in  search. 

I  remember  well  how  changed  was  the  scene  on  ar- 
riving in  the  early  morning  at  Buenos  Ayres,  where 
torrential  rain  was  falling.  Through  the  mud  and 
slush  I  drove  once  more  to  the  old,  familiar  hotel,  and 
nothing  but  the  most  essential  duties  of  the  day  took 
me  out  of  doors,  for  it  rained  "  as  if  the  heavens  had 
opened  and  determined  to  empty  themselves  forever," 
and  next  morning  I  awakened  to  the  rain  thundering  on 
the  roof  with  unabated  vigour.  So  it  continued  all 
that  day,  while  I  made  furtive  dashes  here  and  there, 
saying  a  few  hurried  good-byes,  visiting  the  bank,  ar- 
ranging travelling  accommodation  for  my  journey 
across  the  continent  and  over  the  Andes  to  the  city  of 
Santiago  de  Chili.  The  train  was  to  leave  about  eight 


THE  NATURAL  BRIDGE  OF  PUENTE  DEL  INCA,  ON  THE 
TRANSANDINE  ROUTE  INTO  CHILI. 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES      441 

o'clock  on  the  Sunday  morning,  and  so  admirable  is  the 
accommodation  for  passengers'  luggage,  that  if  your 
heavier  baggage  is  not  delivered  the  previous  day,  it 
runs  great  risk  of  being  left  behind  in  the  morning. 
This  I  discovered  somewhat  late  in  the  evening,  and 
a  hurried  packing  ensued. 

Still  in  the  streaming  wet,  I  saw  the  last  of  the  sod- 
den city  that  Sunday  morning,  and  found  myself  in 
a  particularly  crowded  train,  with  three  travelling  com- 
panions. One  of  these  was  the  most  talkative  and 
genial  of  Argentines  I  have  met,  whose  family  history 
was  speedily  at  my  disposal,  and  much  of  whose  com- 
panionable character  came,  I  doubt  not,  from  the 
French  origin  to  which  he  confessed.  Full  of  a  de- 
lightful admiration  for  all  things  English  and  Ameri- 
can, except  the  language,  which  he  had  found  too  hard 
a  nut  to  crack,  he  proved  the  best  of  travelling  com- 
panions, having  made  the  journey  from  Buenos  Ayres 
to  Valparaiso  many  times  before.  He  was  the  pub- 
licity manager  of  a  very  famous  Anglo-American  firm 
of  advertising  chemists,  and  I  can  assure  them  they  are 
admirably  served,  as  I  found  his  knowledge  of  the 
journalistic  conditions  of  the  Argentine  thoroughly 
sound  in  every  detail  on  which  I  was  able  to  test  it, 
and  that  meant  a  very  representative  test,  as  it  had 
been  an  important  part  of  my  own  occupation  in  the 
country  to  familiarise  myself  with  journalistic  condi- 
tions. 

The  second  of  my  travelling  companions  was  a 
typical  Argentine  of  the  town-hating  variety.  There 
was  nothing  of  the  gaucho  in  his  blood,  and  I  judged 
him  to  be  entirely  Spanish  in  origin,  of  that  fair  type 


442  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

which  could  pass  for  Anglo-Saxon,  but  he  was  a  lover 
of  the  open  spaces  and  the  wild  life  of  the  Camp. 
Wiry  and  slim,  with  blue,  inquiring  eyes,  he  had 
travelled  far,  and  was  familiar  with  many  parts  of 
North  America  and  Europe,  although  he  had  just  com- 
pleted some  five  years  in  the  wilds  of  Paraguay  and 
the  Gran  Chaco,  where  I  believe  the  lovers  of  primi- 
tive life  can  have  more  than  their  fill.  He  recounted 
many  of  his  experiences  among  the  wild  Indians  of  the 
Chaco,  and  showed  me  numerous  photographs  he  had 
taken  there,  with  all  the  pride  of  a  schoolboy.  Here 
was  none  of  your  desperadoes  of  the  wild  places, 
though  he  carried  a  big  enough  Browning  in  his  belt 
and  the  usual  long  knife  of  the  gaucho  in  a  sheath  over 
his  hip.  These  accoutrements  struck  me  as  strangely 
unsuited  to  the  man,  who,  in  general  appearance  and 
in  the  quietness  of  his  demeanour,  would  have  seemed 
far  more  in  place  perched  on  a  high  stool  in  a  count- 
ing house. 

The  third  of  my  companions  was  a  red-headed 
youth  from  Christiania,  on  his  way  to  Valparaiso, 
where  a  fellow  Norwegian  was  managing  a  successful 
business,  and  had  offered  him  a  post.  He  spoke  Eng- 
lish well,  but  Spanish  not  at  all,  and  made  the  most 
elephantine  attempts  to  pronounce  the  simplest  words, 
much  to  the  merriment  of  our  other  companions,  who 
had  at  first  marked  him  down  un  ingles.  It  was  some- 
thing of  a  wonder  to  us  how  he  had  come  so  far  with- 
out mishap,  as  he  showed  so  little  ability  to  deal  with 
the  ordinary  difficulties  of  travel  in  foreign  lands,  and, 
as  the  Franco-Argentine  remarked  to  me,  he  had  poca 
cabeza,  or  "  little  head."  But  I  suppose  there  is  a 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES       443 

special  providence  that  watches  over  such  travellers 
as  he  and  brings  them  safely  to  their  journey's  end. 

The  rain  continued  as  we  sped  along  through  the 
flat  and  uninteresting  country.  Every  road  was  a  run- 
ning stream,  and  ditches  were  swollen  into  rivers. 
Any  prospect  more  dismal  or  less  appealing  to  the 
affections  than  the  Argentine  Camp  in  time  of  rain,  I 
do  not  know.  And  at  this  time  the  rain  meant  a  great 
drop  in  the  temperature  that  sent  all  Nature  a-shiver- 
ing,  so  that  the  dripping  herds  and  the  sodden  sheep 
on  the  far-reaching  pasture  lands  through  which  we 
passed  were  objects  of  pity,  while  the  mud-splashed 
horses  and  the  dripping  drivers  were  supreme  pictures 
of  wretchedness.  From  shanties  here  and  there  by 
the  railway  side,  grey  faces  peeped  out  at  the  train, 
as  one  of  the  events  in  their  dreary  day,  and  the  little 
country  towns  were  so  many  houses  in  seas  of  mud. 
I  remember  we  passed  some  ostrich  farms,  and  these 
birds,  at  no  time  suggestive  of  the  life  joyous,  looked 
the  saddest  of  bipeds.  They  are  of  a  different  breed 
from  those  that  are  reared  in  South  Africa  to  furnish 
ladies  with  their  "  fine  feathers,"  and  are  used  for 
supplying  the  feather  dusters,  or  plumeros,  with  which 
lazy  servants  throughout  the  Argentine  flick  the  dust 
from  furniture  to  walls  and  back  again  from  walls  to 
furniture  —  an  operation  of  infinite  amusement  and 
no  utility. 

I  remember  little  of  our  various  stopping  places, 
except  Junin,  the  great  railway  centre  of  the  Buenos 
Ayres  and  Pacific  Railway  on  which  we  were  travelling, 
and  where  are  situated  its  engineering  works.  The 
station  was  thronged  with  English  people,  many  of 


444  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

whom  had  come  down  to  see  the  train  go  through,  as 
that  is  one  of  the  amusements  all  along  the  line,  the 
young  people  in  the  remoter  country  towns  dressing  up 
to  promenade  the  stations  as  though  these  might  be 
pleasure  piers.  Junin  is  some  four  hours'  run  from 
the  capital,  and  is  typical  of  most  Argentine  towns, 
with  its  earthen  streets  which  are  periodically  ploughed 
and  rolled,  and  so  remain  quite  passable  for  a  few 
days  after  that  operation,  but  for  the  rest  of  the  year 
alternate  between  the  conditions  of  river-bed  and  dust 
heap. 

The  little  station  of  "  Open  Door "  I  remember. 
We  could  see  in  the  distance  the  buildings  and  fields  of 
the  great  asylum,  which  I  should  very  much  have  liked 
to  visit.  This  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  institu- 
tions in  the  Argentine,  for  here  many  hundreds  of  in- 
sane are  employed  in  all  sorts  of  healthy  labour,  under 
the  supervision  of  a  famous  alienist,  whose  methods  of 
treatment  are  entirely  original  and  have  been  the  subject 
of  much  discussion.  I  remember  reading  in  the  pages 
of  M.  Clemenceau,  who  wrote  a  most  interesting  chap- 
ter on  his  visit  to  this  great  asylum,  that  the  superin- 
tendent told  him  so  wonderful  were  the  results  of 
studying  the  tastes  of  the  lunatics  entrusted  to  his  care 
and  placing  them  at  congenial  occupations,  that  he 
often  thought  he  was  the  only  insane  person  among 
all  the  inhabitants  of  Open  Door.  Why  this  English 
name  should  have  been  chosen  for  the  place,  I  do  not 
know,  for  surely  the  association  of  lunacy  and  the  open 
door  does  not  seem  particularly  desirable. 

My  Franco-Argentine  companion  was  entirely 
pleased  that  the  rain  continued,  for  that  meant  a  more 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES      445 

agreeable  journey  in  passing  through  the  almost  desert 
land  across  which  the  railway  runs  in  the  heart  of  the 
continent,  as  in  dry  weather,  and  despite  closed  win- 
dows, travellers  become  covered  with  the  fine,  black 
dust  which  blows  through  every  chink  and  cranny,  mak- 
ing that  part  of  the  journey  dreaded  by  all.  Even  in 
those  days  of  rain,  there  was  a  slight  deposit  of  grey 
dust  on  everything  in  our  carriage,  but  I  confess  to  no 
recollections  of  discomfort,  not  even  at  meal-times,  ex- 
cept that  the  food  set  before  us  was  by  no  means 
princely,  and  the  fruit  in  particular  would  have  been 
thrown  in  the  dustbin  by  an  East  Side  dealer.  Vaguely 
I  remember  lighted  towns  and  the  darkening  night, 
and  then  awakening,  still  in  the  dark,  but  with  the  most 
delicious  of  sweet  morning  airs  penetrating  the  car- 
riage, as  we  stood  still  in  the  station  of  Mendoza. 

This  would  be  nearly  six  of  the  morning.  There 
was  much  hurrying  of  porters  and  shifting  of  luggage 
from  the  express  into  the  Transandine  train,  waiting  on 
the  other  side  of  the  platform.  In  the  dining  car  of 
this,  coffee  was  steaming  and  rolls  and  butter  ready  for 
the  travellers.  We  speedily  secured  our  seats  for  the 
mountain  journey  on  which  the  Transandine  train  had 
to  set  out  about  seven  o'clock.  And  now,  in  the  grey 
light,  one  could  see  in  all  directions  the  dim  forms  of 
rugged  hills,  and  presently  the  dawn  came,  swiftly  and 
bright,  lighting  up  the  nearer  vine-clad  hills,  and  show- 
ing us  great  dim  mountain  masses  westward,  where 
the  mighty  Andes  stood  between  us  and  the  Pacific. 
It  was  a  beautiful  scene,  and  thrilled  me  with  that 
strange  feeling  which  the  hills  must  ever  bring  to  those 
who  have  been  born  and  lived  among  them,  especially 


446  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

after  a  year  in  which  I  had  not  set  eyes  on  any  rising 
ground  save  the  little  hummock  of  the  Cerro  in  the 
Bay  of  Montevideo. 

The  time  left  to  one  for  a  glimpse  of  the  town  was 
of  the  briefest,  and  it  was  a  sleeping  town  I  saw.  I 
had  intended  to  spend  two  days  in  Mendoza  on  my 
way  into  Chili,  and  made  all  arrangements  accord- 
ingly, with  the  high  approval  of  the  authorities  at  the 
Buenos  Ayres  end.  My  luggage  all  bore  large  labels 
for  Mendoza,  so  that  by  no  chance  should  it  be  taken 
on  to  Chili  while  I  remained  in  the  Argentine  town. 
In  the  summer  time,  the  international  trains  go  three 
times  a  week,  and  in  the  winter  time  but  twice.  I  had 
positive  assurance  that  the  thrice-a-week  service  was 
still  running  in  this  first  week  of  May,  so  that  I  could 
spend  two  days  in  Mendoza  between  trains.  In  the 
preceding  year,  the  Transandine  Railway  had  been 
closed  for  four  months,  owing  to  the  severity  of  the 
winter  weather  in  the  mountain  passes,  and  I  was  anx- 
ious that  in  the  event  of  the  winter  of  1913  rivalling 
that  of  1912,  I  should  not  be  among  the  passengers 
"  held  up  "  in  these  snowy  wilds.  I  felt  I  was  run- 
ning it  quite  closely  enough  in  determining  upon  a  two 
days'  stay  at  Mendoza  merely  to  study  the  town,  and 
when  the  guard  of  the  train  informed  me  in  the  course 
of  a  casual  conversation  that  only  two  trains  a  week 
were  running  and  I  should  have  to  stay  four  clear  days 
before  I  picked  up  the  next  connection  over  the  Andes, 
I  forthwith  determined  to  continue  my  journey,  espe- 
cially as  I  had  found  such  agreeable  companions. 

But  now  arose  the  question  of  my  luggage,  which  I 
had  so  elaborately  marked  that  it  might  not  by  any 


THE  INCA'S  LAKE  IN  THE  ANDES,  AS  I  SAW  IT. 


THE  CHRIST  OF  THE  ANDES. 

The  great  statue  erected  on  the  Argentine-Chilian  frontier  to  commemorate  the 
settlement  of  the  boundary  dispute  between  the  two  nations.  The  Transandine  tunnel 
penetrates  the  mountain  some  little  distance  below  this  point. 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES      447 

chance  be  carried  beyond  Mendoza.  I  sought  out  the 
representative  of  Villalonga,  the  Pickford  of  the  Ar- 
gentine, and  explained  the  situation  to  him.  Looking 
at  my  voucher,  he  remarked  that  there  was  no  neces- 
sity to  make  any  change,  as  the  luggage,  according  to 
the  voucher,  was  all  consigned  through  to  Santiago  I 
The  luggage  inspector,  with  a  gang  of  porters,  was 
employed  in  shifting  the  baggage  from  the  transconti- 
nental train  to  that  which  had  to  climb  the  mountains, 
and  he  also  assured  me  that  it  did  not  matter  in  the 
least  where  the  luggage  was  labelled  for,  as  it  would 
all  go  on  to  Santiago.  And  I  had  been  at  such  pains  to 
provide  for  its  unshipment  at  Mendoza ! 

I  greatly  regretted  not  being  able  to  linger  in  this 
fresh  and  attractive  town,  which,  under  the  bright 
dawn  of  that  autumn  morning,  seemed  to  be  a  place 
where  one  might  have  sojourned  very  pleasantly  for 
a  few  days.  The  streets  of  the  new  town,  built  en- 
tirely since  the  disastrous  earthquake  of  1861,  are  for 
the  most  part  wide  and  in  fairly  good  condition,  many 
of  them  lined  with  shady  trees  and  a  stream  of  fresh 
water  running  in  the  gutters.  But  I  was  taking  no 
risks  in  the  upper  Andes,  as  I  remembered  the  experi- 
ences related  to  me  by  certain  travellers,  a  year  before, 
who  had  been  snowbound  at  Puente  del  Inca,  and 
reconciled  myself  to  having  no  more  than  a  glimpse  of 
Mendoza  when  it  was  just  turning  on  its  pillow  and 
thinking  of  getting  up.  (I  lived  to  regret  this,  as  sev- 
eral colleagues  joined  me  in  Chili  at  intervals  of  months 
later,  and  all  had  good  journeys,  the  Andes  remaining 
"  open  "  all  the  winter.) 

The  sun  was  radiant  when,  a  little  after  seven,  we 


448  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

steamed  out  of  Mendoza  station  and  crept  in  among 
the  verdant  foothills  of  the  Andes,  where  all  around 
us  were  signs  of  vegetation  and  natural  conditions  ut- 
terly distinct  from  those  of  the  Atlantic  side.  There 
Was  a  bracing  touch  of  cold  in  the  morning  air,  and  yet 
a  feeling  that  here  was  the  most  delightful  of  climates, 
with  sunny  slopes  where  the  grapes  ripened  in  far- 
spreading  vineyards,  the  sight  of  which  transported 
one  at  once  to  the  pleasant  land  of  France,  and  I  can 
imagine  that  the  many  French  settlers  who  have  come 
to  Mendoza,  attracted  by  the  great  and  growing  wine 
trade  of  the  town  and  district,  will  often  have  the  illu- 
sion that  they  are  still  at  home. 

The  railway,  all  the  way  from  Mendoza  almost  to 
the  Pacific,  follows  the  course  of  rivers,  which  at  first 
run  eastward  from  the  watershed  of  the  mountain 
frontier  and  then  westward  to  the  ocean.  The  scen- 
ery is  by  no  means  sensational  in  its  beauty,  as  the 
train  threads  its -way  among  the  gentler  valleys  wa- 
tered by  the  River  Mendoza  for  some  forty  or  fifty 
kilometres  westward  of  the  city.  But  as  the  ascent 
becomes  more  precipitous  and  the  clatter  of  the  rack 
and  pinion  slackens  to  the  slowest  of  tunes,  while  the 
engine  crawls,  with  much  puffing,  laboriously  upwards, 
the  panorama  of  the  mountain  heights  grows  very  beau- 
tiful, and  unlike  most  mountain  scenery  of  Europe. 

Wild  and  barren  are  the  hills,  and  lifeless  and  dead 
they  seem,  for  rarely  does  a  bird  flit  across  the  scene, 
and  few  cattle  or  sheep  find  pasturage  after  we  have 
passed  the  junction  of  the  Rivers  Mendoza  and  Us- 
pallata,  between  forty  and  fifty  miles  westward  of 
Mendoza.  There  is  a  great  stillness  among  these 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES      449 

mountains,  a  feeling  of  cold  and  cheerless  solitude. 
Here  we  are  among  the  waste  places  of  the  earth,  and 
yet  they  lack  the  Dantesque  majesty  of  rugged  gran- 
deur and  fantastic  outline,  having  instead  a  certain 
rythmic  monotony  of  form,  varied  only  by  their  ex- 
traordinary and  sensational  colouring.  Great  patches 
of  heliotrope  and  purple,  long  zigzag  streaks  of  green, 
immense  blotches  of  yellow  —  vivid  as  mustard  — 
bright  spots  here  and  there  of  red  and  gleaming  blue, 
and  large  tracts  of  oily  black —  such  are  the  colours  I 
recall  among  these  gigantic  volcanic  masses,  where  an 
almost  endless  variety  of  mineral  substances  give  these 
unfamiliar  tints  to  the  treeless  and  grassless  heights. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  I  found  that  what  looked  like  a 
great  patch  of  sulphur,  on  nearer  approach  proved  to 
be  a  thin  yellow  grass,  upon  which  those  strange  ani- 
mals, the  llamas,  are  able  to  feed,  and  it  was,  I  think, 
at  the  station  of  Zanjon  Amarillo,  where  we  had 
reached  a  height  of  some  7,350  feet,  that  I  first  saw 
two  or  three  of  these  quaint  beasts  of  burden,  who 
stopped  cropping  this  scanty  herbage  to  gaze  at  the 
train  with  their  questioning  eyes,  in  which  there  is  al- 
ways a  suggestion  of  indignation. 

These  wayside  stations,  of  which  there  are  many 
on  the  route,  are  almost  the  only  signs  of  habitation, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  that  anywhere  among 
those  forbidding  hills  human  beings  are  so  luck- 
less as  to  have  their  homes.  Everybody  at  the  sta- 
tion seemed  to  be  shivering  with  cold,  as  the 
bright  sunlit  sky  of  the  morning  was  now,  in  the 
early  afternoon,  glooming  over  with  grey,  forebod- 
ing a  snowstorm,  and  I  thought  I  had  never  seen 


450  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

anything  more  charged  with  melancholy  than  the  little 
plot  of  graves  beside  the  station  of  Zanjon  Amarillo. 
Some  dozens  of  tiny,  wooden  crosses  and  withered 
wreaths  decorated  this  loneliest  of  cemeteries.  I  sup- 
pose most  of  them  who  were  sleeping  their  last  sleep 
alongside  this  lone  little  railway  station  had  been  em- 
ployed in  the  making  of  the  line,  for  there  is  surely 
naught  else  but  the  making  and  maintenance  of  the 
railway  to  inhabit  these  cheerless  wastes. 

From  time  to  time,  of  course,  little  groups  of  pros- 
pectors are  wandering  among  the  mountains,  looking 
for  favourable  spots  where  mining  may  be  attempted, 
but  so  far  that  industry  in  this  region  is  of  the  slight- 
est. We  carried  with  us  in  our  train  a  number  of 
young  Englishmen  employed  as  sectional  superinten- 
dents of  the  line,  who  had  been  on  a  visit  to  Buenos 
Ayres,  and  at  various  points  they  were  dropped  off, 
with  much  hand-shaking  and  good  wishes,  to  begin  an- 
other spell  of  lonesome,  but,  perhaps,  not  uninteresting 
work.  Their  conversation  touched  the  varying  mer- 
its of  certain  distances  which  ought  to  be  allowed  be- 
tween the  telegraph  posts,  and  it  was  surprising  to 
learn  how  greatly  opinions  could  differ  on  that  subject. 

As  we  approach  Punta  de  las  Vacas,  a  few  miles 
beyond  Zanjon  Amarillo,  the  ascent  suddenly  stiffens, 
and  the  railway  now  performs  the  characteristic  cork- 
screw journey  of  all  Alpine  lines.  This  station  is  at 
the  junction  of  the  Cow  River  (Rio  de  las  Vacas} 
with  the  Mendoza,  but  whence  the  name  of  the  former 
I  cannot  guess,  for  it  seemed  a  region  where  vacas 
would  fare  badly.  Southward  we  had  now  a  view  of 
the  volcano  Tupungato,  but  when  we  had  laboriously 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES      451 

climbed  another  twelve  or  thirteen  miles  to  Puente  del 
Inca,  we  were  just  in  time  to  see,  away  to  the  north, 
the  summit  of  Aconcagua,  the  monarch  of  the  Andes, 
being  blotted  out  in  a  snow-storm,  which  in  a  few  min- 
utes more  was  upon  us,  quickly  filling  the  empty  bar- 
rows about  the  station  with  whitest  flakes  and  enticing 
most  of  the  passengers  to  engage  in  the  primitive 
pastime  of  snow-balling.  At  this  point,  9,000  feet 
above  sea  level,  where  there  is  quite  a  good  hotel,  with 
thermal  baths  that  attract  many  visitors  in  the  summer 
time,  we  find  one  of  the  few  curiosities  of  the  route,  a 
natural  bridge  of  volcanic  matter,  over  the  stream,  but 
I  imagine  he  was  a  lonely  Inca  who  gave  his  name  to 
it,  as  this  is  surely  the  farthest  limit  to  which  Inca  civ- 
ilisation reached  southward  from  Peru  and  Bolivia. 

The  train  now  continued  its  journey  through  a 
white  world,  the  Andes  had  disappeared  as  if  by  magic. 
Snow  and  white  sky  everywhere,  so  that  it  strained 
the  eyes  to  look  out  of  the  window,  and  the  increas- 
ing cold  made  us  don  our  thickest  wraps  and  muffle 
up,  while  the  rarefied  air  began  to  make  breathing 
somewhat  difficult.  Along  the  route  it  was  strange  to 
pass,  every  little  way,  an  Indian  railway  labourer, 
standing  at  times  on  the  very  edge  of  a  precipice  that 
swept  downwards  into  the  mysterious  white  depths 
beneath,  and  holding  in  his  hand  the  spade  with  which 
he  had  been  at  work  on  the  approach  of  the  train,  or 
perhaps  a  signal  flag  with  which  he  had  indicated  that 
all  was  clear  at  some  dangerous  corner,  but  invariably 
looking  entirely  resigned  to  the  fate  that  had  cast  him 
thus  to  labour  for  the  scantiest  fare  in  these  upland 
wastes,  where,  by  the  railway  side,  we  passed  from 


452  THE  REAL  ARGENTINE 

time  to  time  the  rude  huts  in  which  the  Indian  peones 
huddled  like  animals. 

I  remember  that  the  station  at  Las  Cuevas  pre- 
sented quite  a  lively  scene,  a  number  of  railway  engi- 
neers and  officials,  wearing  their  thick  ponchos,  having 
come  out  to  the  verandas  of  their  wooden  houses, 
which  stand  back  some  short  distance  from  the  station 
and  are  connected  therewith  by  a  wooden  bridge.  I 
felt  that  if  one  had  any  particular  desire  to  pit  himself 
against  the  primal  forces  of  nature  and  the  rude  red 
life  of  savage  things,  here  was  the  station  to  get  off 
at,  10,500  feet  above  sea  level,  but  I  was  glad  to  stay 
in  the  train  and  to  pull  my  travelling  rugs  the  closer 
around  me  as  it  panted  still  upward,  and  presently  en- 
tered the  famous  tunnel  which  penetrates  the  summit 
of  the  Cordillera  Principal,  precisely  where  the  fron- 
tier line  runs  between  the  Argentine  and  Chili. 

When  we  emerged  on  the  other  side  and  immedi- 
ately began  to  descend,  we  had  bid  good-bye  to  Argen- 
tina, and  one  of  the  strangest  and  most  moving  scenes 
I  have  ever  witnessed  presented  itself.  We  came  out 
upon  a  colossal  amphitheatre,  from  which,  to  the  north- 
west, the  mountain  swept  down  from  the  Inca's  Lake 
—  seen  dimly  through  the  driving  sleet  and  snow  on 
our  right  —  into  a  white  mysterious  abyss  some  two 
thousand  feet  below,  where  dark  objects  such  as  the 
rocky  shoulders  of  lower  hills,  seemed  to  be  floating 
in  an  eerie  sea  of  vapour.  The  snow  storm  had  less- 
ened and  was  turning  now  to  rain,  but  the  scene  was 
awesome  in  its  effect  upon  the  observer  descending 
these  uncanny  slopes  into  this  vague  new  land. 


FROM  THE  RIVER  PLATE  TO  THE  ANDES       453 

And  in  such  fashion,  at  the  sleet-veiled  threshold  of 
Chili,  I,  who  little  more  than  a  year  before  had  set 
out  in  search  of  sunshine,  must  take  leave  of  my  reader. 


THE   END 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT 

This  book  isTliie  on  the  last  datestamped  befow,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


24111  VS>HK 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


LD  21-100m-6,'56 
(B9311slO)476 


YC   10223 


5  ' 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


